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The 20th event of its kind at the TU Delft, this full-day peer review session comprised six presentations pertaining to the theme of 'Architecture and Conflict':
Gabriel Schwake - Form Follows Profit: The Architecture of Israeli Housing Estates Since 1977
John Hanna - Spatiality of Urban Conflicts: Everyday Life During Armed Violence (Go/No-Go)
Rick Krosenbrink - Fields of Fire: The Way Dutch Soldiers Read the Landscape
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Peer Review Colloquium: 'Architecture and Conflict'

/ 2018-01-18

The 20th event of its kind at the TU Delft, this full-day peer review session comprised six presentations pertaining to the theme of 'Architecture and Conflict':

Gabriel Schwake - Form Follows Profit: The Architecture of Israeli Housing Estates Since 1977
John Hanna - Spatiality of Urban Conflicts: Everyday Life During Armed Violence (Go/No-Go)
Rick Krosenbrink - Fields of Fire: The Way Dutch Soldiers Read the Landscape
Armina Pilav - Materiality of War and Un-War Spaces in Sarajevo between 1992-1996
Malkit Shoshan - The Footprint and Legacy of United Nations Peace Operations (Go/No-Go)
Guillaume Guerrier - Mapping the Re-Emergence of the Border on the ‘Balkan-Route’

External reviewers were:

Prof. Wendy Pullan - Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies and Principal Investigator of the Research Group ‘Conflict in the City and the Contested State’ at the University of Cambridge.
Dr. David Storey - Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Worcester.
Dr. Erella Grassiani - Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology and Part of the ERC Funded Project SECURCIT on Privatization and Globalization of Security at the University of Amsterdam.

Moderated by Dr. Armina Pilav and Dr.ir. Marc Schoonderbeek.

Moon Walk Map exhibited in Berlin

/ 2017-11-15

Between 16 and 18 November, The Moon Walk Map is exhibited Berlin at the 4th Forum Architekturwissenschaft, with a presentation by Guillaume Guerrier.
For more information, see: http://architekturwissenschaft.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ProgrammfolderDinA5_Forum17_04112017.pdf

The map is part of the project ‘Mapping Walks that Changed the Course of History’. For this, the BC&T research team has selected a number of 8 walks, which will be translated into maps in order to offer a reading of the underlying spatial processes encapsulated. The BC&T team, in collaboration with import. export Architecture and Guillaume Guerrier, will be using mapping as research methodology and applying it to a number of historical walks in order to uncover their inner mechanisms and their spatial impact. The research group focuses on mapping and walking as two crucial interrelated means of understanding human history. While research into walks or mapping has been done before and is continuing at present, to our knowledge the interdependency of the two has never been explored as an instrument towards understanding social, political, architectural and historical events. It is also, as far as the research group is aware, the first time there has been an attempt at spatializing human events, at looking what material impact the presence of the human body has in and on the territory. The current plan consist of The Moon Walk; Trilogy of Gus Van Sant; Salt March; Balkan Route; Death Row Walk; Crossing the Red Sea; A Line Made by Walking; and Million Man March.

Open Invitation: PhD Dissertation Proposals

/ 2017-09-14

Under the auspices of the Graduate School of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the architectural research group ‘Borders & Territories’ (B&T) invites PhD dissertation proposals to help expand its doctoral portfolio.

The B&T is part of the Department of Architecture’s research program ‘Architecture Project and its Foundations’ and is coordinated by program director dr. Marc Schoonderbeek and supervised by prof. Michiel Riedijk. We invite all interested academic and/or professional candidates who are qualified to pursue PhD-level research work aligned with the B&T group’s research agenda. The B&T program offers a rich and challenging environment that provides rewarding research experience. The group consists of diverse, international academics and professional architects. The B&T research group facilitates in-depth, independent research work that relates to the major themes of the B&T’s program as well as educational activities.

For the new round of PhD candidacies, the B&T program will accept and consider proposals that will contribute to B&T’s existing research portfolio. The successful candidate will be expected to contribute innovative, leading-edge research work to the B&T group.

Submissions accepted until 8 November 2017, 12PM.
A thorough description of this open invitation (including submission requirements) can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/386ldvltxsot9ro/Cf-Dissertation-P%2310_B%26T2017-DEF.pdf?dl=0
For questions, please contact B&T coordinator Marc Schoonderbeek (m.g.h.schoonderbeek@tudelft.nl).

Gerda Henkel Stiftung Grant for BC&T!

/ 2017-04-24

The 'Borders and Territories' research group has won a 74,000 euro grant for the research “Securing Democratic Society; State Policies, Technological Surveillance and Spatial (Cross-) Boundary Practices”. The grant covers two years of PhD studies on three case studies, to be developed by Fatma Aliosman, John Hanna and Marc Schoonderbeek.

Abstract from the application: “The rise of global terrorism has led to an increased attention to the construction and securing of (visible and invisible) borders. Through the implementation of a wide variety of security measures, the nature of public space has altered significantly, this affecting the experience by citizens of public space as well. Since the democratic nature of these spaces is at stake, we plan to map and analyse the effect of security measures on public spaces around borders and the way they change the public nature of these spaces. The influence of new technologies on the surveillance and control of space will be part of this study, as will be the socio-spatial response of citizens to these security interventions. Ultimately, the results of this research project will provide insight into the effects of the contemporary heightened states of security alert of public space and will allow us to formulate policy recommendations helping to secure the democratic nature of public space.”

‘Contestations in Architecture #1’

Conditioned by the correspondences and disjunctions between architecture and the body, this talk will consider ways in which the contemporary city is now considered as a contested field of exchanges, that firmly displaces any imagined belief in such a thing as the “ideal city”. Focusing on a number of design projects for Athens – understood as a European prototype condition for architectural, democratic, sociological and other modern systems – the aim is to examine some ways in which we might understand, record, anticipate, and engage some of these new fluxing agencies. Central to this, and perhaps even vital? – is determining how architecture might propagate some provocative new responses to the
contemporary crises that affects Athens and Greece.

Footprint #19, 'Spaces of Conflict'

/ 2017-03-28

A new issue of Footprint is now available, both as hardcopy and online (footprint.tudelft.nl).

Footprint 19 focuses on the more recent roles of architecture in the contemporary spaces of conflict. Departing from a spatial understanding of geopolitical, climatological and economical conflicts, the various contributions highlight the large scale and phenomenal transitions in the physical world and in society by extrapolating, through examples, the abundance of relations that can be traced between conflict, territory and architecture. Conflict areas often prove to be fertile grounds for innovation and for the emergence of new spatial forms. The issue reports on the state of perpetual global unrest in architecture through a series of articles and case studies that highlight the consequences of conflicts in the places and spaces that we inhabit. In the introduction, these are discussed as an interlinked global reality rather than as isolated incidents. In doing so, the contemporary spaces of conflict are positioned in the context of emerging global trends, conditions, and discourses in the attempt to address their indicative symptoms while reflecting on their underlying causes.

Open Invitation for PhD Dissertation Proposals

/ 2017-02-15

Session #09

Under the auspices of the Graduate School of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the architectural research group ‘Borders & Territories’ (B&T) invites PhD dissertation proposals to help expand its doctoral portfolio.

The B&T is part of the Department of Architecture’s research program ‘Architecture Project and its Foundations’ and is coordinated by program director dr. Marc Schoonderbeek and supervised by prof. Michiel Riedijk. We invite all interested academic and/or professional candidates who are qualified to pursue PhD-level research work aligned with the B&T group’s research agenda.

The B&T program offers a rich and challenging environment that provides rewarding research experience. The group consists of diverse, international academics and professional architects. The B&T research group facilitates in-depth, independent research work that relates to the major themes of the B&T’s program as well as educational activities.

For the new round of PhD candidacies, the B&T program will accept and consider proposals that will contribute to B&T’s existing research portfolio. The successful candidate will be expected to contribute innovative, leading-edge research work to the B&T group.

The deadline for submission is 8 May 2017, 12 PM.

For a proper description of this open invitation (including submission requirements), please click on the link below or contact the coordinator of the BC&T program: Marc Schoonderbeek (m.g.h.schoonderbeek@tudelft.nl).

Open Invitation for PhD Dissertation Proposals

/ 2016-10-09

Session #08

Under the auspices of the Graduate School of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the architectural research group ‘Borders & Territories’ (B&T) invites PhD dissertation proposals to help expand its doctoral portfolio.

The B&T is part of the Department of Architecture’s research program ‘Architecture Project and its Foundations’ and is coordinated by dr. Marc Schoonderbeek and supervised by prof. Michiel Riedijk. We invite all interested academic and/or professional candidates who are qualified to pursue PhD-level research work aligned with the B&T group’s research agenda.

The B&T program offers a rich and challenging environment that provides rewarding research experience. The group consists of diverse, international academics and professional architects. The B&T research group facilitates in-depth, independent research work that relates to the major themes of the B&T’s program as well as educational activities.

For the new round of PhD candidacies, the B&T program will accept and consider proposals that will contribute to B&T’s existing research portfolio. The successful candidate will be expected to contribute innovative, leading-edge research work to the B&T group.

The deadline for submission is 7 November 2016, 12 PM.

For a proper description of this open invitation (including submission requirements), please click on the link below or contact the coordinator of the BC&T program: Marc Schoonderbeek (m.g.h.schoonderbeek@tudelft.nl)

Post-Digital Contradictions in Drawing Complexities in Mapping

/ 2016-09-22

A venue organized by the ‘Border Conditions & Territories’ research group, the chair of Architectural Design/Public Building and the Department of Architecture.

The POST-DIGITAL_CONTRADICTIONS IN DRAWING/_COMPLEXITIES IN MAPPING colloquium addresses the contemporary state of architectural drawing by focusing on the intrinsic difficulties in the relation between theory and practice in drawing and mapping. The venue will consist of three sessions in which outstanding International scholars, current PhD researchers and more project-oriented researchers will present and discuss their work in and on drawing.

Underlying all presentations is the understanding that drawings are never full projections toward future construct only, but are, more importantly, privileged representational viewpoints that are indicative of a culturally determined, conceptual understanding of architecture. There is ideology in every drawing, just as there is agency, yet architectural drawing is not an autonomous entity solely dependent of its own specificity and frame of reference only.

During the last decade, architectural drawing appears to have dissolved into a visual culture that is fundamentally guided by the opening of a seemingly infinite amount of possibilities, offered by new technologies and software. The larger contribution the colloquium intends to make to the discourses of architectural drawing and mapping is to make explicit the amazing power of expression in drawing, the relevance of theorizing drawing in general and the necessary framing of the seemingly unlimited possibilities of drawing. Also under these circumstances, the territory of production and reflection can no longer be discussed by using the more traditional conceptual frameworks and knowledge of drawing, meaning an attempt to formulate a renewed, or at least reconsidered terminology is at stake.

Heteroscapes of Dissensus

/ 2016-08-31

On 1 September, Fatma Aliosman has started her PhD research entitled 'Heteroscapes of Dissensus'.

This dissertation offers a view on the relationship between spatial order and political power. Focusing in particular on the spatial aspect of political and ideological disagreements, the study investigates the consequences of oppositional spatial tactics of/against power in relation to urban space. The proposal argues that in cases of political dispute (or dissensus), public places are used as their most effective tool. Subsequently, urban spaces operate as a political apparatus, where oppositional acts take place.

The research aims to identify and frame such spaces, observing their supposed three major ways of intervention and accordingly expose how the ‘space of dispute’: (1) acts as an emancipator tool through which multitudes that have been silenced or not been able to express themselves oppose authority and its implementations; (2) introduces irregularity through transgressive spatial operations that activate new conditions and heterogeneous applications to the urban field; (3) accommodates heterotopias through the exclusion and un-recognition of the ‘messy, ill constructed and jumbled’ landscape of ‘other places’. In order to clarify the ways oppositional power converts ‘regular’ space into its own political agent, this study will focus on the ‘re-appropriation of space’ under the influence and invasion of foreign and conflicting agents.

Networks of Flux

/ 2016-07-31

On 1 August, Gökçe Önal has started her PhD research entitled 'Networks of Flux'.

Setting out on the manifold extents of transportation technologies and the realms within which they operate, both physical and virtual, this research aims to undertake an analysis of the perceptual landscapes that emerge upon the contemporary experience of urban flow. While mechanisms of urban movement substantially operate on a vehicle-based flux of networks, the virtual realm constructs a distinct set of reality and an array of infinite actions. The mobilized gaze, respectively, has by far transcended the extents of the human scale and maintains a rapid course of transformation.

Of specific interest for this research is the set of visual codes and the emergent city image intrinsic to the erratic dimension of the urban form, as the study aims to develop the necessary tools in translating this complexity into a viable array of vocabulary. Constituting the site of inquiry are thus urban spaces of continual travel or flux which incorporate multiple forms of perception and inscriptions of meaning – or namely ‘viatopias [‘via’- route and top(os) – a place]’. Here, urban travel is treated as a visual landscape by means of which movement itself is elaborated as a condition of border. The gazing-subject is, accordingly, attributed a critical degree of significance in responding to this problem: dwelling on the analogy of the human gaze with that of the camera lens, unfolding of the contemporary urban flux with reference to the pertinent filmic techniques is believed to contribute to the construction of the accurate analytical tools in the process.

Official presentation X Agendas for Architecture at the Venice Biennale

/ 2016-06-01

Friday 29th of May, X Agendas for Architecture was officially presented to the public at the preview days of the Fifteenth Architecture Biennale in Venice. The book presentation was held in the Dutch Pavilion at the invitation of curator Malkit Shoshan and Het Nieuwe Instituut and featured a debate among a selection of authors, Sarah Lorentzen (Cal Poly Pomona, Los Angeles), José Maria Wilford Nava Townsend (Universidad Ibericoamericana, Mexico City), Hannah Leroux (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg), Michiel Riedijk and the editors, Marc Schoonderbeek, Oscar Rommens and Loed Stolte and was introduced and moderated by Tom Aevermate on behalf of the TU Delft Faculty of Architecture. Shortly the book will be available for sale.

X Agendas for Architecture

/ 2016-05-16

The chair of Public Building, chaired by prof. Michiel Riedijk, and the research group 'Border Conditions and Territories' are pleased to announce the publication of X Agendas for Architecture, published through Artifice, books on architecture.

X Agendas for Architecture is a speculative and inspiring book for the current and upcoming agenda makers in architecture, presenting relevant ideas from architectural professionals and educators. Edited by Oscar Rommens, Marc Schoonderbeek and Loed Stolte, the book offers an overview of recent agendas for architecture, presenting a range of contributors into a structure discourse to highlight issues and extend questions on the necessity of 'an' agenda within the historical turning point(s) of contemporary architecture.

The official launch of the book will be held at the opening days of the Dutch Pavilion at the upcoming Venice Biennale (on Friday 27 May, at 12:30). Further details about this event will be made available shortly.

The book is the indirect result of the symposium and lecture series ‘X Agendas for Architecture’ organized by the Delft University of Technology architecture research group ‘Border Conditions & Territories’ at the end of 2011, in which a number of architects, theoreticians and scholars gave presentations of their work. The symposium reflected on the themes formulated in the research group’s first publication (the 2010 book ‘Border Conditions’), which gave a comprehensive overview of the group's architectural research and design projects. In addition to this attempt to frame and discuss the recent developments in architectural discourse and to extend the questions on the necessity of architectural agendas, the range of invited authors was enlarged with a group of relatively young deans who have recently been appointed at architecture schools worldwide. We considered this development part of a transition towards a new generation of agenda-makers in architectural education.

In the course of this year, the themes, agendas and opinions presented in X Agendas for Architecture will be part of a series of discussions involving a broader audience interested in future agendas for architecture. More information on this program will follow in due time.

Open Invitation for PhD Dissertation Proposals

/ 2016-03-20

session #07

Under the auspices of the Graduate School of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the architectural research group ‘Borders & Territories’ (B&T) invites all interested academic and/or professional candidates who are qualified to pursue PhD-level research work aligned with the B&T group’s research agenda.

For the new round of PhD candidacies, the B&T program will accept and consider proposals that will contribute to B&T’s existing research portfolio. The successful candidate will be expected to contribute innovative, leading-edge research work to the B&T group.

The PhD candidate will conduct scholarly research and other related activities. The candidate will be fully integrated into the B&T research staff, working closely with its members. The research group will provide a collaborative platform for gaining extensive experience and skills for independent research work.

The deadline for submission is 2 May 2016, 12PM.

For a proper description of this open invitation (including submission requirements), please contact the coordinator of the B&T program: Marc Schoonderbeek (m.g.h.schoonderbeek@tudelft.nl)

Re-forming the Hinterland

/ 2016-02-03

On 1 February, Diederik de Koning has started his PhD research on agro-industrial construction and rural settlement, provisionally entitled 'Re-forming the Hinterland' .

In this research, innovation and standardization are considered to be the driving forces behind the high-tech, low-cost agro- industrial structures we find in rural territories throughout the economically developed world and which are slowly transforming the picturesque countryside into a generic hinterland. These agro-industrial structures are driven by increasingly complex techniques and innovations that reside outside of the discipline of architecture. This technical nature of agro-industrial construction, together with the lack of a public audience in the hinterland, results in architects having trouble intervening in this condition adequately.
Throughout history, two particular branches of architecture and planning proposals for the hinterland can be distinguished: one that tries to reconcile the city with its agricultural land into one productive semi-urban region; another that considers the hinterland as being an independent condition in relation to its urban counterpart. Both approaches seem to be failing these days: projects of the first approach often disregard the economic-geographical forces behind the process of urbanization, leaving the projects unfeasible and thus unrealized; projects of the second approach seem unable to overcome the increasing gap between architecture and the technologies that drive the agro-industry and its construction.

This research picks up on the second approach, putting forward the hypothesis that there is such a thing as an agro-industrial territory that can be studied as a condition of its own. The demarcation of this territory is done topologically rather than topographically. Its territory is further understood through an inter-disciplinary narrative that starts from the standardization of agro-industrial construction, and continues with the resulting question of design, the influence on its territory, architectural spin-offs, and ends with cultural expressions. Ultimately, the research aims at defining the adequate architectural tools that are now lacking, by redrawing the hinterland actively. These tools can help both in understanding the condition of the territory and in designing for it adequately.

Open Invitation for PhD Dissertation Proposals

/ 2015-09-23

session #06

Under the auspices of the Graduate School of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the architectural research group ‘Borders & Territories’ (B&T) invites all interested academic and/or professional candidates who are qualified to pursue PhD-level research work aligned with the B&T group’s research agenda.

For the new round of PhD candidacies, the B&T program will accept and consider proposals that will contribute to B&T’s existing research portfolio. The successful candidate will be expected to contribute innovative, leading-edge research work to the B&T group.

The PhD candidate will conduct scholarly research and other related activities. The candidate will be fully integrated into the B&T research staff, working closely with its members. The research group will provide a collaborative platform for gaining extensive experience and skills for independent research work.

The deadline for submission is 2 November 2015, 12PM.

For a proper description of this open invitation (including submission requirements), please contact the coordinator of the B&T program: Marc Schoonderbeek (m.g.h.schoonderbeek@tudelft.nl)

Filippo Maria Doria wins International Archiprix 2015

/ 2015-05-10

We proudly announce that after winning the National Archiprix in The Netherlands earlier this year, Filippo Maria Doria has won the International Archiprix 2015 with his project 'Recording and Projecting Architecture' which comprises a design for a Library of the Blind in the Villa Borghese in Rome.

Throughout modern history, the image that Rome has oered visitors has been underpinned by the power that resides in the city. One of the aspects that encapsulates the main stages of Rome’s urban development is the progressive derealization of the city’s physical space, thus reducing and converting material reality into visual spectacle. This process has led to the transformation of central Rome into a spatial construct in the service of representation. The function of representation in Rome’s urban evolution explains the design of a library for the blind. To a blind person, there is always an intermediate phase between the confrontation with physical reality and the formation of an idea of the surroundings, in which the function of the eye is assumed by additional intellectual eort. Lacking the sense of vision as a spontaneous interpretation of space, a blind person is constantly forced to codify the external into verbal and numerical systems in order to delineate the characteristics of the surroundings. Without sight, space loses its certainties and becomes a conjecture, a hypothesis. Similarly,
there is a moment of blindness at the origin of architectural representation, a suspension of sight that enables the conception of space. Just before a line is traced, the draughtsman is blind to the visible: the hand, guided by memory and not by perception, thus acquires the capacity of anticipating the visible. The library rises in the park as a freestanding building, walled in, turned inward.

For the third time in recent years, the Border Conditions graduate studio has been awarded a rst prize in both the National and International Archiprix. Following the awarding of Max Rink’s project in Tallinn (Estonia) in 2009 (Maja Turg Market, with involved mentors Klaske Havik, Micha de Haas and Jan Engels) and Simone Pizzagalli’s project for London Prison project in 2011, with involved mentors Heidi Sohn, Freerk Hoekstra and
Marc Schoonderbeek), Filippo Doria's project is one of seven winners of the 2015 Archiprix International. Doria’s project Recording and Projecting Architecture was part of the Border Conditions Rome Periphery studio with involved mentors: Henriette Bier, Freerk Hoekstra, Pierre Jennen, Oscar Rommens and Marc Schoonderbeek.

04-06-2015 Open Invitation for PhD Dissertation Proposals

/ 2015-03-10

session #05

Under the auspices of the Graduate School of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the architectural research group ‘Borders & Territories’ (B&T) invites all interested academic and/or professional candidates who are qualified to pursue PhD-level research work aligned with the B&T group’s research agenda.

For the new round of PhD candidacies, the B&T program will accept and consider proposals that will contribute to B&T’s existing research portfolio. The successful candidate will be expected to contribute innovative, leading-edge research work to the B&T group.

The PhD candidate will conduct scholarly research and other related activities. The candidate will be fully integrated into the B&T research staff, working closely with its members. The research group will provide a collaborative platform for gaining extensive experience and skills for independent research work.

The deadline for submission is 18 May 2015, 12PM.

For a proper description of this open invitation (including submission requirements), please contact the coordinator of the B&T program: Marc Schoonderbeek (m.g.h.schoonderbeek@tudelft.nl)

Open Invitation for PhD Dissertation Proposals

/ 2014-04-01

Under the auspices of the Graduate School of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the architectural research group ‘Borders & Territories’ (B&T) invites all interested academic and/or professional candidates who are qualified to pursue PhD-level research work aligned with the B&T group’s research agenda.

For the new round of PhD candidacies, the B&T program will accept and consider proposals that will contribute to B&T’s existing research portfolio. The successful candidate will be expected to contribute innovative, leading-edge research work to the B&T group.

The PhD candidate will conduct scholarly research and other related activities. The candidate will be fully integrated into the B&T research staff, working closely with its members. The research group will provide a collaborative platform for gaining extensive experience and skills for independent research work.

The deadline for submission is 12 May 2014, 12PM.

For a proper description of this open invitation (including submission requirements), please contact the coordinator of the B&T program: Marc Schoonderbeek (m.g.h.schoonderbeek@tudelft.nl)

Borders&Territories PhD-session

/ 2013-12-08

On Thursday 12 December, the 2nd 'Borders&Territories PhD-session' will take place at the Faculty of Architecture of TUDelft.
Scheduled presentations:
14:00-15:00: Andreas Karavanas (on vernacular didactics: the example of Mount Athos)
15:00-16:00: Filippo Maria Doria (on representation and blindness)

The presentations will be in room 01WEST280 and both are open to the public.

As last time, the candidates have been kindly asked to prepare a presentation of about 25-30 minutes, which should at least treat:
-general topic and content of the proposed dissertation
-methodological choices (the (roughly) proposed structure)
-relevancy for the discourse and 'appropriateness' for the 'Borders & Territories' research program
-planning

Two Archiprix Selections

/ 2013-11-22

Two alumni of the Border Conditions & Territories graduate studio are among nine projects that have been selected to represent TUDelft at the national Archiprix competition. The two nominees are Anvina Devi Canakiah, with her project in Pristina entitled 'Sediment of a Fragmented Landscape', and Filippo Maria Doria, with his project for a Library for the Blind in Rome (project title: 'Recording and Projecting Architecture'). The national Archiprix prize ceremony is scheduled for May 2014.

Malkit Shoshan has joined the B&T research group with PhD research 'Warfare versus welfare'

/ 2013-10-16

Malkit Shoshan has joined the B&T research group to continue her PhD research on the adaptation of military and aid compounds into civic assets, entitled 'Warfare versus welfare'. Shoshan's research aims at examining the possibilities of physical adaption of peacekeeping and aid compounds into civic resources, such that they can eventually be used by the local community. Now, more than ever, a study into the transformation of compounds into civic infrastructures is necessary as the United Nations is carrying about 16 missions in various countries around the world and of these, 15 are peacekeeping operations. These missions involve temporary occupation of large areas by western armies and aid agencies. These spaces are used as bases, training fields, detainment centers, prisons, army bases, aid distribution centers, and disaster management headquarters. The mission spaces are designed according to strict spatio-typological guidelines and are executed by military generals and sometimes by doctors, but rarely by architects. Recent discussions on dissolving international presence are taking a central stage in local and international political discussions, such as the fully equipped army bases left behind by Dutch forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Each mission leaves behind large built-up areas and physical infrastructure. Shoshan is scheduled to finish her PhD research in 2015.

'The Border as Threshold Space of Simultaneities' finally being published

/ 2013-08-31

The Archimaera online journal (archimaera_architektur. kultur. kontext. online) has finally published its issue on Thresholds ('Grenzwertig).
The entire issue and the article 'The Border as Threshold Space of Simultaneities' by Marc Schoonderbeek can be downloaded from the Archimaera website:
http://www.archimaera.de/2012/grenzwertig
http://www.archimaera.de/2012/grenzwertig/thresholdspace/index_html

P.h.D research by Gil Doron: The Dead Zone & The Architecture of transgression

/ 2013-06-27

Gil Doron has agreed to join the Borders&Territories research group to finalize his PhD research entitled 'The Dead Zone and the Architecture of Transgression'. Doron's research aims to offer a critique of the current professional and theoretical approach to so-callled 'Dead Zone' spaces through developing different urban research methods and writing modes that give a more complex and accurate account of these 'dead' zones. Since the discourse of the 'Dead Zone' and its on-the-ground consequences have many times had devastating implications for already marginalized communities, Doron's research aims to point out the effect of the discourse and highlight the iniquities. The research is making connections between various scales of colonization which uses the same discourse of the 'tabula rasa' and emptiness (i.e. the notion of wilderness in the construction of Palestine as 'empty land' vis-à-vis the notion of the 'void' in urban marginal areas. Furthermore, the research offers a toolbox of methodologies for researching such complex spaces, as well as writing about them. It also suggests that the mode of writing developed here can be applied to other urban spaces and issues and in non-academic setting (i.e. reviews of urban spaces by local planning departments, the process of resident participation in neighborhoods renewal etc.). Doron's research is scheduled to be completed in June 2014.

Modi Operandi issue #01 has been published.

/ 2013-01-28

The first issue of the TU Delft Modi Operandi Series is finally published! The book 'Spaces, Poetics and Voids' by Simone Pizzagalli and Marc Schoonderbeek, with a contribution of Nicolo’ Privileggio, has been published by Architectura&Natura Press in Amsterdam and issues Pizzagalli's London prison project with an extensive set of graphic materials, original drawings, site study pictures and theoretical reflections. The work and the original materials developed as a graduation project by Pizzagalli within the Border Conditions London studio are brought to another narrative level by the amazing graphic work by Michael Snitker.
'Spaces, Poetics and Voids' is the first volume in a new series from TU Delft called Modi Operandi and aims to become and influential platform for a new generation of architects through its presentation and critical examination of innovative ideas regarding the conception and elaboration of the architectural project.

BC Alumna Negar Sanaan Bensi wins honourable mention at National Archiprix with the project 'Space of Remembrance and Forgetfulness' in Havana (Cuba)

The project narrates the void as a new kind of space for Havana, old and filled with memories that are gradually being forgotten: a memorial space for daily life. Here the voids are conceived of not as leftover space but as space of a new kind that is old and filled with memories and meanings that are gradually slipping away. The project adopts a narrative approach and a presentation in drawings that together express the specific qualities of these voids. It all began with several walks taken by its designer in the old part of Havana where most of the voids are to be found. This resulted in the Spatial Void Map of Havana. The process then took two parallel paths. One of these was to record the spatial qualities in models and drawings, with the drawings often superimposed in a reference to the layering and the notion of the palimpsest. The other path was to present scenarios for the voids through drawings, texts and one model per scenario. Lastly the project was presented in one of the blocks of central Havana, itself a void in the city. Space of the Voids is a memorial space for daily life. A new approach to the city, it presents a fragmented picture of differing scenarios as a metaphor for changes in Havana. Space of the Voids embodies the space between reality and fantasy, between inside and outside, open and closed, memorial and everyday life, urban and architectural scale, building and landscape, public and private. In the end these voids are absorbed by the city and become part of the grid...

see also: http://www.archiprix.nl/national/index.php?project=3066&language=en and
https://www.archined.nl/2011/06/archiprix-2011-eervolle-vermelding-space-of-the-voids-ruimte-van-herinnering-en-vergetelheid/

Panel discussion by research group Border conditions

/ 2011-05-03

Coinciding with the first Rome Biennial of Public Space Rome, the Embassy of the kingdom of the Netherlands in Rome hosts a panel discussion in association with the Border Conditions of TU Delft Faculty of Architecture.

The panel discussion will focus on the historic aqueduct L’Acqua Felice and the spatial planning challenges it poses for contemporary Rome. The panel discussion will include presentations by the students of TU Delft Faculty of Architecture. Their work will be on display in the embassy.

Facing Impact of the Second World War: Urban Design in Contemporary European Cities.

This event is organized by the Department of Architecture to celebrate the publication of 'Border Conditions', the first book in the Delft Architecture Series. The book presents the results of the Border Conditions research and design studio and offers a collection of essays and experimental architecture projects that emanated from research into the spatial impact of socio-political developments, with an emphasis on mapping the contemporary urban milieu.
The book provides a thematic overview of the contemporary discussion surrounding borders in architecture, from conflict situations to marginal urban areas; from Kinshasa-Brazzaville, Gibraltar, Kaliningrad and Kiev to Benidorm, Marseille and Rotterdam. A selection of projects shows how mapping can be used to not only register and interpret urban processes, but to show how these design principles can act as the basis for architectural interventions.

1st prize in Archiprix NL 2009

The section of ‘Architecture/Public Building: composition & tectonics’, chaired by prof. S. Umberto Barbieri, proudly announces that its former BC-student Simone Pizzagalli won shared 1st price at the annual Archiprix competition. Each year the Dutch institutions offering Master's programmes in architecture, urban design and/or landscape architecture select their best graduation projects and submit them to Archiprix. Out of these 27 final entries, the plan of Simone Pizzagalli was selected.

This year’s jury, consisting of Haiko Meijer (architecture), Arjen Oosterman (theory), Miranda Reitsma (urban design), Ronald Rietveld (landscape architecture), and Max Risselada (architecture), praised the exceptional qualities of the project in their jury report:
“This design is loath to reveal its exceptional qualities at first glance. Yet it intrigues from that moment on. The project makes the very best use of the possibilities education has on offer to act as a laboratory. It explores the different positions designers can adopt within their field, opening new perspectives in the process. The demonstrated approach makes a strong case for the designer to take an autonomous tack. In the followed method the programme is transformed through associative research into a series of spatial treatments. Critiquing the discipline, the scheme is an intriguing response to commercialization of the image and the attendant image-making in architecture.”

X AGENDAS FOR ARCHITECTURE presents an overview of recent agendas for architecture, by offering a range of contributors into a structured discourse to highlight issues and extend questions on the necessity of 'an' agenda in the historical turning point(s) of contemporary architecture. This speculative publication collates ideas from architectural professionals and educators to the up-and-coming generation of agenda-makers.

66 X Agendas for Architecture II

X AGENDAS FOR ARCHITECTURE presents an overview of recent agendas for architecture, by offering a range of contributors into a structured discourse to highlight issues and extend questions on the necessity of 'an' agenda in the historical turning point(s) of contemporary architecture. This speculative publication collates ideas from architectural professionals and educators to the up-and-coming generation of agenda-makers.
X Agendas for Architecture includes 26 essays from contributors such as Marcos Cruz, Manuel Gausa, Sarah Lorenzen, Martine de Maeseneer, Leonel Moura, Christopher Platt, Javier Quintana, Michiel Riedijk, Francois Roche, Patrick Schumacher, Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Weimin Zhuang.

65 Water studios

Border Conditions / / 2015-10-05

Infrastructure for Water and Settlement: the architecture of new resilient settlements, MSc2 design studio’s

Choices involving water have been the most fundamental, ever since the dawn of civilization, and remain so until today, when the doom-scenario of climate-change invariably features the twin-perils posed by drought and flood. Connecting watersheds, irrigating arid land and engineering sanitation has produced intricate, often vulnerable systems that involve high stakes in contexts that are demographically, ecologically and socially dynamic. The studios start from the specific resistance of the sites and their relationship to a water system to speculate on new possibilities of settlement by means of the architectural project.

Canal Du Midi (F)
Infrastructure for water and settlement, re-appropriating utopia and everyday

The Canal du midi, the oldest section of the Canal des Deux Mers, the inland water route between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, was built 1666-81. Although no longer the transport route it once was, changing relationships of distant places by connecting A with B, it still stands as the concrete engineering testimony of the age of Enlightenment. The studio investigated the possible role of the canal in the context of emerging population centers in the region, by enhancing its public usage all the while cementing its manifold existing qualities.

Tutors: Oscar Rommens and Micha de Haas

Arizona/Sonoran Desert (USA)
Infrastructure for water and settlement, reconfiguring the desert

The desert landscape is seemingly inhospitable and defined by extremes: wet and dry, hot and cold, permanent and ephemeral. Instead of the broad-brush strategies of damming and undamming, future scenarios for water restrained settlements in the Arizona desert will be explored by means of an architectural project, as a tactical approach. Manipulating the particularities of the terrain in flood prone areas to retain water periodically sustains seasonal settlement and periodic cultivation.

Tutors: Filip Geerts, Marc Schoonderbeek and Negar Sanaan Bensi

The studio is a joint initiative with the ETH Zurich, Chair of Landscape Architecture of Prof. Christophe Girot.

64 COST Network

The Border Conditions Network COST Action (BC-NET) will build an innovative research network of researchers, educators and local stakeholders in urban planning, architecture, social geography and other fields investigating the spatial aspects of border conditions in (and on the fringes of) Europe. BC-NET will offer in-depth historical and theoretical knowledge exchange of existing border conditions in Europe and across its edges; the mapping of contemporary dynamics which shape the urban conditions, identities and perception of European cities; investigate border conditions through specific case studies; and make proposals for an informed operation of design, social and spatial management practices in these contexts. BC-NET thus aims to bring together theoretical insights, methods of spatial analysis and design. Focusing on urban developments within the context of regional territories and urban border zones, and relating these emergent border conditions to conceptual and theoretical scientific debates, BC-NET positions itself within the entire scale palette from the discursive level to urban localities. Harvesting the widespread European knowledge related to the notion of borders and their spatial consequences among a variety of relevant disciplines, BC-NET has the potential to generate innovative cooperation and creative concepts that could raise the usability of scientific research of border conditions into the creation of new strategies of sustainable urban development. BC-NET connects researchers, educators and practitioners who investigate the spatial practices in socio-political contexts. It aims to exchange knowledge and expertise regarding contemporary spatial conditions around territorial, political, social and urban borders. By involving participants for different domains (researchers, scholars, students and local stakeholders such as politicians, public administrators etc.), special emphasis can be made on regional logistics and local conditions, and the impact of local political decisions in and on urban space in border regions can be studied.

63 AMPLIFIER

Border Conditions & Territories / / 2014-10-31

BC&T magazine, launched 2014

‘Born under the difficult stellar constellation of yet another devastating crisis in architecture, AMPLIFIER is a strange, new venue that focuses on the formulation of proper and fundamental critiques about the current, general condition of the architectural discipline. Through this focus, AMP deliberately seeks to be critical in the era of post-criticality, to enforce a new form of engagement in an era seemingly devoid of any. By making use of rigorous, and even blasphemous and scandalous critiques, AMP intends to not merely point out what is wrong in the discipline, to point out that which cannot be discussed, but wants to put the polemical finger on those places that fundamentally hurt. Through these critical acts, AMP hopes to either intensify the pain to unbearable levels, or to relieve this pain permanently. The bastard child of a multitude of voices and the some conditional disciplinary transgressions, AMPLIFIER celebrates a wide variety of critical techniques to allow for a wide variety of possible critiques. Humor, provocation, cynicism, speculation, ridicularization, and even idealism will be brought forward in order to achieve temporary (fictitious?) enlightenment. AMP questions the current believe that resistance is no longer futile, but that resistance is simply undesired. AMP is a platform for all generations, the place where proper discussions take place, where those still in some form of love affair with architecture meet and where like-minded as well as those that disagree share tables.’

Cynical and satirical,
Hilarious and sarcastic,
Aggravating and ironic,
Annoying and humorous,
Sizzling and ironic,
Irritating and in good sprits,
AMP amplifies the rumors, the whispers, the points of principle, and that which is on everybody’s mind but seems too awkward, too difficult, to mention or be brought forward….’

Until recent times, migration has been regarded mostly in negative terms, viewing the phenomenon as a problematic outcome of the contemporary spaces of political, ethnic, economic and/or even environmental conflicts. Looming large on the horizon, however, are forms of migration that will inevitably alter our current experiences, forms of knowledge, skills and spatial habits through the formation of new fields and networks, increasingly supported and enhanced by our fast-expanding technological capabilities. Though largely regarded as a by-effect stemming from the modernization of society since the industrial revolution, first emerging with the vast movement of labor forces from countryside to city and later with the ascent of even more immense movements of immigrants, refugees, and other fortune and/or relief seekers moving across continents, it can easily be argued that migration has been part of and is thus intrinsically connected with human existence on this planet. Additionally, on a larger scale, the city provides shelter and places of refuge for those passing by and passing through, while the migratory movements and trajectories inscribe themselves into the territory. Historically, migratory movements have always shaped societies and cultures, but also the form of cities and their architectures, both in their very centers and on their peripheries. At the urban scale, places of migratory movement have seemingly always occupied a central place in its very fabric, as if temporary stay and exchange of ideas and goods provided a primary source of further development of the city, both materially and culturally. Today, migration has started to show some remarkable changes regarding the relocation, displacement, transmigration and other forms of cross-border movements of persons, goods, ideas or species, turning migration flows into geophysical and geopolitical fields where strange mixtures of hope and desperation, fanaticism and open-mindedness, protection and exchange, conflict and tolerance are emerging.

61 Infrastructure Things

Territories / / 2014-10-18

Symposium and Capita Selecta lecture series, organized by Filip Geerts in cooperation with Jean-Louis Cohen and The Berlage

The ‘Infrastructure Things’ capita selecta and lecture series proposes a spectrum to discuss infrastructure, focusing on the very ‘thingness’ of infrastructure and attempting to lay the groundwork for its inclusion as a relevant design inquiry, a valid research problem, and an engaging didactic theme within the culture of the Faculty of the Architecture and the Built Environment at the TU Delft. A precise calibration of the specificities, idiosyncrasies, and possibilities of the thing of infrastructure, rather than a focus on the large-scale planning desires attached to networks and flows, could be the specifically architectural contribution to a dialogue between disciplines on the matter. A practice?that blends, frames, and interacts with landscape and, simultaneously, a practice that assembles parts that construct and deconstruct the city-as-machine are the extremes of the infrastructure spectrum set as the symposium’s starting point. Infrastructure’s role in architecture culture, from the periphery of it and sometimes at its very center (‘Infrastructure Things’); its relevance for the understanding and design of hidden, residual public spaces (‘Public Building’); its resonance with a large-scale design project also referred to as landscape (‘Correcting Landscape’); and its role as a source of learning?for design in general (‘Material, Elements, and Instruments’) are the consecutive rubrics dealt with by speakers taking part in the capita selecta lecture series.

59 PhD-Program

Under the auspices of the Graduate School of the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology, the architectural research group ‘Borders & Territories’ (B&T) started to construct a rich and challenging environment that provides rewarding research experience for PhD candidates. Concerning architecture as embodying complex physical and spatial phenomena, and socio-political conditions shaped by a complex milieu, the B&T’s overall research modalities comprise: (1) the analysis and critique of philosophical, cultural, social, political and aesthetic value systems that influence the production of architectural construct; and (2) the theorization of instrumental and indexical qualities inherent in architectural construct. In addition, the B&T emphasizes the interdisciplinary approach that connects architecture to other related disciplines such as urbanism, engineering, aesthetics, critical theory, media studies, social science, and so forth. The B&T research outlines three main areas of research: (1) the discursive field of disciplinary ‘borders’ of architecture and the transgression of such borders; (2) the context and situated-ness of architectural construct and form conceived as territorial entity; and (3) the development and practice of operational instruments through which architectural construct is conceived and composed, such as drawing, mapping, inscription, sampling, encoding, and so forth. B&T’s studies approach the architectural construct not as coherent singularity that continues a historical discursive tradition, but as a precursor of 'new' discourse. The basic premise behind the view is that the catalogue of possible architectural forms is neither complete nor exhausted. Therefore, 'other' possibilities of architecture should be addressed by speculating on the relevance of the appropriation, implementation and application of methods and instruments that have been external to the historical disciplinary core (cartography, literature, art, philosophy); and the constructs and objects that have not been considered as architectural 'material' as such in the historical sense of the discipline.

58 DIMI Istanbul

Territories / workshop Istanbul 2013 / 2014-05-31

Following the exhibition and the symposium 'Central Station', alumni French Bochanen, Sine Celik and Roderick Trompert will be organizing in May 2013 a Dutch-Turkish event in Istanbul and Ankara under the name ‘Central Station / Merkez Istasyonu’. The eight Dutch station projects from the exhibition in 2011 will be complemented by ten Turkish projects, of which models, drawings and other visualizations will be shown. The exhibition was on display until May 18 in Istanbul at the Faculty of Architecture of the ITÜ and is now on display in the exhibition hall of the Association of Independent Architects of Turkey. From 6 to 8 May, a workshop was organized and led by Filip Geerts and Alper Semih Alkan. Master students from the Delft University of Technology worked together with students from the Istanbul Technical University on infrastructural issues on the cross road between architecture and civil engineering. The workshop was organized in close collaboration with the Delft Infrastructure & Mobility Initiative (DIMI) at TU Delft.

57 Infrastructure by Section

Territories / / 2014-04-30

INFRASTRUCTURE BY SECTION

Integrated Design for Transit-oriented Development in the Zaancorridor. The studio is a joint initiative of BNA Onderzoek, NS, Vereniging Deltametropool, Provincie Noord-Holland, three municipalities and TU Delft/DRI Infrastructures & Mobility.

56 Balkan Studio: Pristina, Skopje, Tirana

From Wikipedia: ‘Balkanization is a geopolitical term, originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or di- vision of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other’. The first exploration of the territory within and in- between the cities of Prishtina, Skopje and Tirana was executed from a distance. Through the available sources particular aspects of the territory were revealed. Under the general notion of balkanization, several themes were explored: identity, memory, routes, borders and geography were some of the categories under which our individual themes were rising. Ethnic identity was often in the foreground throughout the exploration. No clear boundaries were found in the territory between the ethnic groups. There seemed to be an ongoing tug of war between these groups regarding territories and cultural heritage. The differences were mostly between the collective expression of identity by society and the definition given by the state. The imposition of identity by the state in many cases has caused controversy. In some cases certain identities were blown up to disproportionately large scales to represent only one group in society. In other cases erasure of identity occurred after periods of conflict so that the history of previous regimes and ethnic groups is not acknowledged. Later, upon moving through the territory, it seemed as though these identities had never existed in these places. During the preparatory research the way we explored the territory was adjusted. By zooming in and out and by focusing the gaze to occasionally frame the territory, new information was brought to the surface. When moving through the territory, a fragmentary view can be useful to extract certain information when in other cases a broad panoramic view of the whole is dominant. This was only one of the tools that we were equipped with to assist us on our excursion into the unknown.

55 NORM-ALITY

The specific characteristics of Heerlen, and the intrinsically related social and economical problems of the city, have been discussed and clarified at length in recent decades. In this period, Heerlen’s potential as a small city located in the peripheral border zones of a Unified Europe have been made explicit and several attempts have been made to translate these insights into urban renewal policies that would start to address the deficiencies of the city. Within the diversity of Heerlen’s urban policies, several attempts and projects have been initiated to properly guide and frame this process towards a new and bright future, based on ‘what the city might become’. […] This is a careful process that tries to decipher, detect, reveal, unearth, excavate, discover, uncover and extend the hidden spatial characteristics and qualities that are embedded in everyday life and its spatial practices in relation to the built environment and urban structures of Heerlen. […] The NORM-ALITY exhibition presents an atlas consisting of different understandings of Heerlen. The maps and images in this atlas are not aimed at giving an overview of the city as a whole, nor of the city as consisting of different fragments in a setting of adjacency. Rather, these readings traverse, horizontally and vertically, the urban landscape of Heerlen in an attempt to reveal how Heerlen citizens operate in the spaces and built structures of the city, and how they are simultaneously ‘uncannily’ grounded in the landscape. Our explorations and investigations in Heerlen have resulted in different readings that are expressed in maps, photographic impressions and textual descriptions and statements. In the end, the aim has been to test Heerlen’s potential as a city of NORMALITY and OBSCURITY, which simultaneously implies an opposition to the emphasis on ‘city branding’ municipalities nowadays promote.

54 Panel Border Aesthetics Tromsø

Panel at the Border Aesthetics International Conference, september 2012.

MEASURING TERRITORIES AND EXPLORING BORDERS (excepts)

The panel presented original, transgressive and experimental modes and models that relate the research of border conditions to architectural design. By setting up hypotheses and creating scenarios, future developments could be tested and probed, applied and implemented in urban and architectural design projects. Precisely the ‘translation’ of in-depth territorial and urban readings into design procedures and strategies constituted the main objective of this panel discussion. Techniques such as drawing, mapping, digital media and text will form the tools and instruments that enable the translation of urban and territorial readings into strategies for architectural design, and explore the potential of such translations. With this experimental approach comes a certain understanding and appreciation of border aesthetics ‘as found’ as well as produced by our proposed design interventions. It is in marginal urban areas, borders of states, territories and cities, that marginal urban practices tend to take place. Limits of ‘normal’ behavior are transgressed and social and political differences become apparent. Such sites, where ‘other’ spatial conditions have emerged, and that are ‘teeming with suggestive meanings and unexpected potential’, have hardly been analyzed and discussed within the contemporary architectural discourse. The possibility of an intrinsic relationship that might exist between methods of spatial analysis and methods of architectural design is the second of the essential objects of study in the ‘Borders and Territories’ research program. Even though the spatial analysis of the city and the territory are seemingly well-established practices in architectural discourse, the incorporation of characteristics of ‘the urban’ and ‘the territorial’ via these analyses have hardly been discussed. This ‘operationalization of the external/contextual’ within architectural design strategies is what remains conspicuously absent in reflections on architectural design procedures. Our researches address the speculative nature of this relationship by emphasizing and clarifying the ‘modus operandi’ of an architectural project.

53 Tarkovski Retrospective

Marc Schoonderbeek / Film series organized in cooperation with ARGUS / 2012-07-31

ARCHITECTURE AND CINEMA: ANDREI TARKOVSKI RETROSPECTIVE

Andrei Tarkovski passed away 25 years ago, on 27 December 1986, not long after finishing his eighth film, Offret/The Sacrifice. To commemorate his extraordinary work, the BC group (in cooperation with Argus) offers a Tarkovski retrospective during which 4 films are viewed and the relationship between architecture and cinema discussed. Tarkovski’s work is considered particularly relevant for architecture, as the themes of his films not only cover a variety of spatial and architectural topics, they form a very elaborate and integrated body of work as well, where several dimensions of architecture come together. In Nostalghia, the cultural heritage experienced by an artist in exile is part of an extended exploration of the quest for artistic relevance coinciding with a longing for ‘home’. In Andrei Rublov, the role of intuition and reason in artistic practice forms the kernel of the film’s meditations. In Stalker, the voyage into an industrial wasteland becomes part of an inner journey towards salvation while the question of the border, of inclusion and exclusion, of freedom and imprisonment, are also part of the film’s narrative. What connects these films is the systematic deconstruction of the house as home. In each of these films, the house is both the place of being and belonging, as well as a haunted space, a place where elements of decay and alienation play a crucial role in the overall experience of space. The minimal (house) versus maximum (zone) place of dwelling in Stalker; the invasion, doubling and ultimately sacrificial destruction in Offret/Sacrifice; the return to the distant, fatherly home in Solaris and Nostalghia, appearing in dream-like sequences; or even the house of God in Rublov, where perhaps painting becomes the ultimate place of home at the end of the movie, are different manifestations of a recurring architectural theme in Tarkovski’s work.

52 Dresden Workshop

The effects of the second World War on contemporary European cities is also in Dresden rather obvious: the center of the city has been heavily bombed on the night between13 and 14 of February 1945. The bombs and the ‘fire storm’ that followed leveled practically the whole center. Aside from the impact on people’s lives and the course of the war, this bombardment had a decisive impact on the future of the city space. After the war, the East German government tried to rebuild Dresden as a socialist metropolis, with its related Communist modern architecture. After the reunification of Germany, a counter urban movement became active, promoting the reconstruction of historical buildings – with the newly built replica (2005) of the destroyed Frauenkirche as its centerpiece. During the workshop and the project, the impact of this dramatic urban history on today’s Dresden will be investigated. As the area study is rather large, the exact location and assignment of the project, namely a public building, will be left open and decided in the course of the project. The project is the last part of a 3-year cooperation project between the universities of Delft, Krakow and Dresden, studying the impact of WW II on European city planning. In the past two years the case studies were the city of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) in Poland, and the ‘fire line’ of the city of Rotterdam.

Studio Dresden and the Workshop 2011-2012 was part of Master 1 curriculum

See also: www.urbanwarimpacts.eu.

Workshop leader BC: Micha de Haas.

51 Brussels

Brussels is divided by a number of physical and socio-political factors. Among the most prevalent are: industrial areas, water, political boundaries, railway lines, and vacant land. Industrial areas are accumulated along the shores of the canal. They are inaccessible areas characterized by securely fenced perimeters and generally loud, hazardous conditions. The canal itself is a major dividing element. It runs along an approximate North-South axis and effectively splits the city in half. Political boundaries act indirectly in fragmenting the city, by jeopardizing the effectiveness of the city’s infrastructure. The Brussels Capital Region is comprised of nineteen separate municipalities, and attempts to synchronize infrastructural projects across each municipality results in fragmented and an unconventional distribution of city services. Railway lines cross the city in all directions. The main line, which bisects the historic city centre, runs along a North-South axis. As a result of large topographic differences, the train lines divide to various degrees, according to the changes in topography. Mono-functional city planning as a consequence of large-scale ‘Brusselization’ has led to large swathes of land either permanently unoccupied, or unoccupied for the majority of the day. A superimposition of these dividing factors produces the image of a city, which is highly fragmented. Contrasting, and seeking to make sense of the dividing elements, are the connecting factors. These factors include green spaces and public transportation routes. Brussels has abundant green space, which is connected via a circumscribing green corridor. The green space serves the function of a social condenser, in addition to physically connecting neighbourhoods. Bicycle paths, metro lines, tramlines, and high-speed bus routes provide alternative modes of mobility within the city.

50 Modi Operandi 01

This new publication series aims to become an influential platform for a new generation of architects through the presentation and critical examination of innovative ideas on the conception and elaboration of the architectural project. At the basis of the series lies the attempt to understand the contemporary work of architecture and its particular specificity regarding borderline approaches to the architectural project, a project that is nowadays in need of reconsidering many of its instruments and the specific knowledge on which it is ‘constructed’. The intrinsic relation between analysis and design, as it is consistently yet variably embedded in the architectural project, will be investigated via the explicit elaboration of theoretical and historical traces, exploratory techniques and new forms of architectural expression. The emphasis on the ‘modus operandi’ of a project implies a clarification of the embedded methodological or procedural apparatus of an architectural project in close relation to the specific means of expression. Both aspects will be addressed in each publication through a careful examination of the various disciplinary techniques operational within the architectural project. At the same time, the Modi Operandi want to favor the involvement of the new generation of architects with an academic debate at a time in which the architectural project as a whole, i.e. its research and design approaches, its disciplinary knowledge and, last but not least, its education, are undergoing a radical transformation towards territories that are still unknown in both its extent and intent. On this basis, the Modi Operandi do not intend to address a prescriptive position or a particular tendency towards an architectural style, rather it engages the challenge and the struggle to map a diffuse system of approaches to architectural research and design, the elaboration of their processes, the theoretical reflection it engages and the idea of architecture it implies.

49 X Agendas for Architecture

The 2011 Fall Capita Selecta lecture series on Architectural Design, organized by the TU Delft’s research group ‘Border Conditions and Territories’, will attempt to frame and discuss the current developments in architectural discourse and extend the questions on the necessity of architectural agendas. The questions posed openly at the Border Conditions symposium ‘X Agendas for Architecture’ (October 2011), will be partially addressed in four sessions specifically aiming at formulating a possible point on the agenda for architecture. The four lecture sessions will present several sets of knowledge, tools and tasks for architecture and explicate how architectural knowledge can be made relevant within the current architectural debates. These issues are in need of being challenged towards our shared future of architecture, and serve to address the current prevailing atmosphere within the discipline that apparently meanders from crisis to crisis. During the last decade, the interest in the conflict of space and the space of conflict has resulted from the different moments of crisis with a global impact, ranging from economic stagnation, financial crises and environmental devastation, to name just a few. As a result, an entire array of highly specific understandings of space have been developed, influenced by social, ideological, economical and political changes and debates, and in most cases they were made evident via the altered experiences of space, either from an individual or a collective perspective. What appears to remain nowadays is the kind of operative practices that confirm the economic servitude of architecture (as design). This servitude in turn surrenders to philosophers and thinkers the difficult contemplation of the complexities and meanings of territorial occupation, and to the politicians (and their business interests), the decision of spatial demarcation.

48 Cañada Real Galiana Madrid

In the history of Spain there has been a long tradition of wool trade. In the 16th century, the trade of wool was one of the most important elements in the Spanish economy next to the gold and silver they mined in South America. In order to support this, a large network of cattle trails was built. Known as cañadas, they connected the north of Spain with the south, allowing farmers to transport their herds to the respectively warmer region during the changing of seasons. Due to the importance of the wool trade, this extensive network that at one moment covered up to 2% of the Spanish land, was declared public domain by royal decree. This meant that no municipality or individual had the right to build on the 75m wide strip that defined these cañadas. In present day, the cañadas are no longer used as cattle trails and lie in nature, untouched, used as hiking paths or for other outdoor recreational activities. Fifteen kilometers to the southeast of Madrid lays one cañada in particular that has developed differently. A sixteen kilometer strip called Cañada Real Galiana. Beginning in the 1970s, the strip began to be inhabited. With a continuously growing population, it has become a unique phenomenon in Spain as it houses approximately 40.000 people, all of them living in illegality. Though the original function of the cañadas is obsolete, the law that was installed to protect its function is not. Still to this day no one is allowed to build on this land. What this means is that municipalities, when wanting to build crossing infrastructures, have to tunnel under or bridge over it. And in the case of individuals building a dwelling, they take the risk of having their homes destroyed; torn down by local governments.

47 Rome Biennale

Border Conditions / Participation in the first Rome Biennale on ‘Public Space’, with an additional presentation at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands / 2011-08-24

(text from bk.tudelft.nl)

Coinciding with the first Rome Biennial of Public Space Rome, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Rome is pleased to host a panel discussion in association with the research group Border Conditions of the TU Delft Faculty of Architecture. The panel discussion will focus on the historic aqueduct L’Acqua Felice and the spatial planning challenges it poses for contemporary Rome. Rome is full of monuments that demarcate and punctuate its territories. Stretching from the historic center to the city’s peripheries, we are all familiar with the narratives of the well-known monuments that attract millions of visitors every year. Certain others, due to the lack of popular interests or simply because of its incomprehensible size and location, remain dormant and eventually fall into neglect and abuse. L’Acqua Felice, a civic project by Pope Sixtus V completed in 1586, provides such an example of ‘background’ monument today that straddles through the modern day city. The aqueduct, as it is an infrastructure, provides an important point of departure for a discussion on the role of territorial monuments and their future. Some of the questions are: How do we deal with a monument such as the aqueduct that has become an obstacle rather than an asset for the city? Given the scale and the extent, should the aqueduct be preserved as a backdrop or incorporated into the city’s fabric? If it were to be incorporated into the city’s modern fabric, what will be the appropriate approach? When such an infrastructural monument is diminished in its original function, what are its potentials in the city’s culture and economy? The panel discussion will include presentations by the students of TU Delft Faculty of Architecture. Their work will be also on display in the embassy.

46 Rotterdam Workshop

Border Condtions / / 2011-07-31

Workshop ‘FACING IMPACT OF THE SOCOND WORLD WAR: URBAN DESIGN IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN CITIES’, part II: Rotterdam (NL), Spring 2011.

Within the context of an European Erasmus Intensive Program, Cracow University of Technology has been cooperating with TU Delft Faculty of Architecture, HAWK University of Applied Sciences and the Landscape Department of Dresden University to organize a three stage workshop project (of two weeks duration each) under the title: ‘Facing Impact of the Second World War - Urban Design in Contemporary European Cities’. The first stage of the project took place in O?wi?cim, the city where the Auschwitz Museum is located, in September 2009. The next stage of the project was planned for March 2011 in Rotterdam, concentrating this time on the ‘Brandlijn’ (or Fire Line), the line that demarcates the extent of the destruction of Rotterdam’s inner city as a result of German bombardments of the city at the start of WWII. The Rotterdam workshop involved a series of lectures, intensive field research and studio work, a number of discussion sessions with local community members and a substantial promotional work. The objective of the project is to develop the ability to undertake urban design tasks within the broad context of issues beyond sheer urban composition and relevant to problems and expectations of the community. Such issues include: social conditions, urban history, local identity and tradition, cultural and natural environment, landscape and others. The proposed project supports the concept of sustainable and responsive urban design and development. The issues and problems to be addressed are relevant to urban design and development management in most European cities. An important expected outcome will be the increased ability of participating students to resolve complex urban tasks in a responsive, contextual way, regarding historical, cultural and social issues, and - in respect to indirect target groups, trough dissemination of the results - an awareness of significance of such approach to urban design.

45 Rhein/Ruhr Gebiet

The Ruhr Area is a polycentric urban area in Nord-Rheine Westphalia in Germany with a population of 7.3 million people and an area of 4435 km2. It is nowadays considered the fourth largest urban area in Europe after Moscow, London and Paris. It comprises 53 cities, several of which were previously industrial cities with its largest cities being Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg and Bochum. The rivers Rhine to the west, Ruhr to the south and Lippe to the North border the Ruhrgebiet. Perceived from a map, the Ruhr appears like a single city, as no visible breaks are apparent amongst individual city boroughs. The urban landscape is an overall dispersed and low contrast periphery, where the distinction between city and country has seemingly disappeared. This is due to the fact that individual cities in the Ruhr grew independently from each other during the industrial revolution, unlike monocentric urban regions like London or Paris, which grew through the amalgamation of several towns around a growing central city. The spatial structure of the region is an interweave of railways, roads, large industrial land linked to housing estates (Wohnsiedlungen) for workers in steel and mining industry deprived neighborhoods, high-knowledge centers and lots of green spaces, often in the form of Haldes; artificial hills created through mining. […] Before the industrial revolution, the area was mostly agricultural land. It was only during the industrial revolution in the early 19th century that the Ruhr was first developed as urban region. […] Since then, the area has been suffering a large population shrinkage. Nowadays, the region is finding ways to make the area more attractive and is currently undergoing major spatial, economic and sociocultural transformations. By constructing several maps over different periods of time depicting elements which constituted the region and its transformations, we discovered several constants which were unaffected by the patterns of urban growth and shrinkage. These constants included certain roads, and railways, but also ‘empty’ areas filled with potential.

44 Aqua Felice Rome

Sang Lee and Marc Schoonderbeek / ‘Rome Peripheries’ / 2011-07-04

(excerpts)

The BC Rome studio attempts a new reading of Rome’s urban places – in this particular instance, along L’Acqua Felice – and explore the conditions of peripheries that enclose and frame those places in the city. […] An investigation into the recent history of the Felice aqueduct showed already the marginality of the spaces and their typical ‘occupants’, exclusively consisting of social ‘outsiders’. The shantytown (or ‘peripheral slums’) that had grown in and around the aqueduct, have been cleared out the last decades, resulting in the present-day condition where practices of spatial appropriations and demarcations have turned the aqueduct area into a diffused mix between public, semi-private and private spaces. Simultaneously, the traces of the previous inhabitants are still abundantly present. While focusing on particular aspects of urban places and peripheries presented along the aqueduct, the very idea of a periphery appears blurred and problematic in that the multiplicity of interpretations that this monument can assume in the contemporary city. It is out of this apparently uncontrollable and actually apprehensible notion of the ‘marginal’ and the ‘peripheral’ that new concepts of space could form. The aim of the BC’s research and mapmaking work in Rome research was indeed to speculate on the potential of these urban patches where the indeterminacy still leaves room for interpretation that is transformed into a strategy through a precise process of mapmaking. In this way, subjective experiences of the city are translated into an architectural discourse that is on one hand sensuous and personal and on the other the fiction of maps contribute to the formation of posterity. The practice of mapmaking provides the opportunity to extract and reassemble conventional concepts into spatial ones by shifting the perception of the navigator.

43 B&T research program

Urban and territorial conditions are considered the prime forces of influence for contemporary architectural production and reflection. The 'Borders & Territories' research group aims to chart this field in order to establish the rules for and the reasons behind architectural conjectures in the context of the emerging territory and the spatial conditions around borders and within territories. Metropolitan city-regions as well as specific urban border conditions are investigated in order to determine the rule, or minimal preconditions, underlying their construction, which is simultaneously considered essential for an informed operation of design practices in these contexts. The particular field of study in Borders & Territories deals specifically with spatial boundaries and fields of operation within a framework that relates theory to practice and research to design. The framing of architectural operations is investigated in four distinctive ways:

(1) Discussion of architectural space and form within a multi- and trans-disciplinary framework (discussing the similarities and differences between disciplines such as urbanism, geography, art, technology, philosophy, etc.);
(2) Development of architectural form as an object situated within the spatial conditions of the (urban) territory;
(3) Employment and testing of different, trans-disciplinary means in order to conduct experimentation in architectural design;
(4) Development of specific methodologies and instruments informing the architectural project.

As this research program enquires the intrinsic nature of the architectural project (and its conceptual and theoretical construction), within the context of regional territories and urban border zones, the research project positions itself within the entire scale palette from the region to urban localities. The program will investigate how questions of space across borders and territories can become the (basic) material for the architectural project, which is regarded as the concrete instance where regional logistics meet with local conditions.

42 Potemkin Odessa

Etymologically speaking, there are two theories about the meaning of ‘Ukrina’, namely ‘Country’ or ‘Border-Land’. As is almost literally indicated in the country name, a constant fight for its territory has influenced Ukraine’s constitution and, as a result, the country has been under political, social, cultural influence of many states. […] Odessa is located in the South of Ukraine, facing the Black Sea. The city was officially founded in 1794 as a Russian naval fortress in the old Turkic town of Khadjibe, and in 1795 was renamed to ‘Odessa’. The new city grew quickly and a period of being a free port (1819-1859) helped the city to become the most cosmopolitan city in the Russian Empire. By the middle of the 19th century, Odessa became Russia's largest grain-exporting port. During the 1960s and 1970s, the city grew tremendously with the development of heavy (oil, chemical and metal refining) industry. In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city became part of newly independent Ukraine and from 2000 to 2025, Odessa port is again a special free economic zone, and the city is the currently the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of over 1 million, administrative center of the region of Odessa Oblast. […] The BC Odessa investigation centered on mapping the different dérives executed in the city. These mappings offered insights into urban phenomena, focusing on issues of navigation, spatial and temporal distortions, and the different ways of perceiving urban elements.

40 TU Delft Architecture Series #1

The published book presents the initial results from the ‘Border Conditions’ research and design studio of the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology. It offers a collection of essays and experimental architecture projects that emanated from research into the spatial impact of socio-political developments, with an emphasis on mapping the contemporary urban milieu. The book provides a thematic overview of the contemporary discussion surrounding borders in architecture, from conflict situations to marginal urban areas; from Kinshasa-Brazzaville, Gibraltar, Kaliningrad and Kiev to Benidorm, Marseille and Rotterdam. A selection of projects shows how mapping can be used to not only register and interpret urban processes, but to show how these mappings contain design principles that can act as the basis for architectural interventions.

39 Oswiecim Visible City

Obviously, the Second World War has had a major impact on the development of Oswiecim, when the city transformed from a small, moderate city into a post-war city with the horrible legacy of the concentration camps. Two big institutions played an important role after the war: the Auschwitz State Museum and the chemical firm Dwory SA. During Poland’s communist era both where remodeled into state institutions and the chemical industry became a global player. This position became weaker by the end of communism and never revitalized from this. On the other hand, the Auschwitz State Museum became more and more important for the city but the Museum is not playing an important role in the planning of the city. Overall, the city of Oswiecim is made up of a couple of areas with very specific and different characters. The structure seems to be random, making the urban tissue a patchwork of incongruous parts, characterized by linear and spatial fragmentation. On first reading, the three main entities (city, camps, factories) are separated by vast green zones without any clear and distinct qualification. In reality, however, there are further divisions: the functional organization of Oswiecim shows specific area divisions and uses. Every single entity is defined by a specific use: daily life with all the main facilities; factory; tourism industry and transportation facilities attached to it. Many non-defined zones constitute zones in-between blocks of flat and mainly dense fragments, while public spaces are rare. While in Communist times a spatial adherence between daily life and industry still existed, nowadays that situation is reversed. The factories are all most in decay, while the tourist industry is totally isolated spatially, economically and socially from Oswiecim itself. The organization of the city is separated and has nothing to do with these two main entities.

38 Cairo Invisible City

The BC Cairo studio engaged the problem of the illegibility of the contemporary city, using photography and film to trace phenomena invisible to conventional means of viewing the urban fabric. Cairo’s territory, having evolved over some five thousand years, has been the locus of major historical events and transformations, the icons of which continue to exert a dominating influence on the collective image of the city, particular in mass media depictions. The sprawling Cairo of today, however, is known to its inhabitants as ‘the city without a manual’, an appellation reflecting the lack of clear order in its unregulated, heterogeneous expanse, with an estimated 92% of Egypt’s urban properties informally held. The BC Cairo oligopticons employ a specialized vocabulary, avoiding simplistic binary distinctions in favor of subtle gradations. Rather than foregrounding either the unintelligible physical fabric of Cairo or specific interpretations as the definitive nature of the city, these layers are presented as necessary elements that constantly interact to form shifting, multiple versions of the city. An interactive, non-linear exploration through a database of open material is much more suited to understand the contemporary city than a traditional sequence. It recasts the city itself as a database, a field of disparate phenomena, in which various translations operate, without any narrative ever fully accessing the whole. With the contemporary city itself as a new media form, the two layers can exist freely and independently. This allows for continual expansion and addition of interpretations on both levels. Architectural and urban designs based on static conventions – whether historicizing or modernist – lose all relevance in the face of the changes occurring in cities today that it is unable to register. These invisible processes involve no designers, no discourse. Their forms are frequently the border of what is traditionally considered ‘architecture.’

36 Oswiecim Workshop

O?wi?cim, the city devastatingly branded during the Second World War, became the place of an international architectural workshop in 2010. Participating in it, students and tutors from three universities (Cracow University of Technology, Technical University Delft and HAWK Hildesheim) attempted to architecturally trace the different paths of identity and places of memory in this city. According to the German Nazi ‘agenda’, the O?wi?cim/Auschwitz area was destined to be transformed into a ‘new German city’, with properly developed industrial structures, housing estates for German settlers, and with the availability of cheap labor of prisoners, conveniently supplied from the nearby concentration camps. On one side of Auschwitz grew a large industrial complex covering an area of over 4 square kilometers; the IGFarben Werke. Due to these developments, pre-war O?wi?cim lost its small city character. The spatial traces of this Wartime history mark the lines of individual and common memory, which had to provide an answer to the pervading question throughout the workshop of how to introduce the millions of tourists to the Auschwitz Museum to the rest of the city. One of the more important outcomes of the workshop was the discovery of abandoned spaces and the value of the postindustrial areas. Fascinated with the former factories, students proposed new technology centers, research centers, recreation and cultural facilities. In some cases they even turned the proceeding degradation of the industrial spaces into an advantage. Through absorption by the nature and greenery they would undergo gradual transformation into natural forms of landscape as for example natural parks or a zoo. Next project editions are planned in Rotterdam and Dresden. See also: www.urbanwarimpacts.eu.

35 E-Archidoct TaBC

The TaBC program offers a preliminary one-year e-learning program, organized to facilitate PhD researchers based outside TU Delft, in which the basic themes of the TaBC program will be extended upon. For the start of the program in the Fall of 2008, the TaBC research group has developed a program which focuses on two themes related to the general research project, ‘survey’ and ‘eclectic mapping’ respectively. Besides the current explicit interest in the technique of mapping to relate urban conditions to architectural design, the TaBC research program will extend its research into clarifying several themes related to the stated, general trajectory of the program. Re¬spectively, the notion of eclecticism within architectural thinking; the notion of navigation in exploring the diverse contemporary urban conditions and the techniques and methods of survey as the very basis of architectural (design) intervention, are offered as themes with which to get engaged. Next to the above-mentioned specific thematic researches, the program offers general in¬troductions to the research program and the one-year program consists of 30 ECTS per semester, formed by 20 ECTS obligatory courses and 10 ECTS free choice. Courses include Architectural Theory TaBC (a series of 5 seminars in which the major themes of the program are discussed (ie ‘Survey’, ‘Navigation’, ‘Things’, ‘Eclectic Fields’ and ‘Systems’), combined with 10 related exercises investigating the several classic and contemporary tech¬niques - measuring, drawing, mapping, scanning, etc. The compulsory bibli¬ography consists of texts, project documentation, films and documenta¬ries, which are made available digitally), SpaceCustomizer and Architectural Positions. Courses are compatible with the e-learning concept, meaning exchange of knowledge takes exclusively place through an internet portal and incorporates a multi-media exchange platform for communication and video-conferencing. Resources will be made available via the internet and includes texts, images, films, and video streaming (lectures and seminars].

33 IABR_2009-ParallelCases

Border Conditions took part in the ‘Collective’ section of the IABR//Parallel Cases exhibition. Regarding this topic of ‘collective’, the IABR states: ‘Collective treats the transformation of the post- socialist city under the influence of emerging radical market mechanisms and shifts in social structure.’ For the Parallel Cases program of the IABR, the Border Conditions studio showed two case studies related to the (Post-)Socialist city, namely the projects developed for Havana (Cuba) and Kiev (Ukraine). The differences and similarities that emerge when comparing Kiev and Havana were presented with a specific emphasis on the spatial conditions and transformations that are presently unfolding within these cities. The post-communist era in Kiev, where the first consequences of the emergence of a free market economy have resulted in some profound spatial changes in the former socialist city, show the delicate balance between acts of individualism and private initiatives within a collective setting. In Havana, another, radically different, interpretation of the ‘socialist’ character of the ‘urban’ has caused subtle but extensive transformations of the former colonial city. The socialist ideals of the government, combined with the US-embargo since the 1960s and the lack of resources of the last decades since the disappearance of the USSR, have resulted in a city in decay where pockets of wealth and preservation are still present, especially after the current influx of money out of the tourism industry. Despite their differences, both Kiev and Havana are places where ambiguous spatial conditions have emerged, conditions that are, partly, a result of shifts in ideology; shifts in the balance between collective and individual; changes in the economical circumstances; etc.

32 Havana

Originally established in 1514 on the South coast of Cuba, Ciudad de la Habana is nowadays the capital of Cuba. Havana moved in 1519 to its current location and with its 2.1 million inhabitants, it is the largest city in the Caribbean region. During the 18th century, Havana became one of the largest cities in the Americas. After first being conquered by the British, Havana became Spanish and both conquerors caused Havana, during the 19th century, to turn into a rich, flourishing city. Since 1930, and under American influence, the city saw a new era of development mainly with the development of the tourist industries. In 1959, the communist revolution under the guidance of Fidel Castro prevailed. Emphasis was made on improving social services. Under Castro’s regime, and as a result of the implementation of a Soviet Union-based communist model combined with the U.S. embargo, the society as a whole suffered tremendously and Havana has been frozen in time since the start of the revolution in 1959. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and thus the end of Soviet subsidies, Cuba came in an economic crisis. Havana itself can be divided in three distinct areas, namely Habana Vieja, Centro Habana and Vedado, while around these three main areas, the city consists of new suburban districts. Habana Vieja, with its romantic narrow streets, balconies and old houses, is the traditional center of Havana. Havana is administrated by a city council with a mayor as chief, but the city is still dependent on the national government. Years of economic crisis and shortages left much of Havana in decay and decomposition making the cities atmosphere unique in the world. It made Havana into an authentic that is real.

31 Ideal City / Real City

Territories / / 2009-06-14

THE CASE OF VEMA IN 3 TAKES>
The exhibition ‘Ideal City/ Real City’ (on display at TUD from 30 May–12June 2008) will show the work of three architect-teams that participated in the VEMA-project of the 2006 Biennale of Venice. The new city of Vema between Verona and Mantova was conceived by Franco Purini, who asked a total of twenty teams to propose architectural projects for specific places connected to a given program within his plan. The proposal for a new-town (città di fondazione) as a contemporary ideal city in the context of the sprawling urbanized region in the North of Italy (coined città diffusa) was […] having the immediate future of our techno-global culture as its principal ingredient. This very real contamination by reality is of continued interest when focusing on the three fragments presented. The idea to extract three teams that share similar linguistic and formal concerns, allows for a discussion on the relationship of architecture, city and territory – this taking the original event as a point of departure to highlight specific content rather than the overall multiplicity of a welcoming young-architects platform. At the same time the at first instance not at all dissimilar proposals for The Theatre (Monestiroli & Ferrari), The Cemetery (Dogma & Office) and The Warehouse (Stefano Milani & team) conceal specific and possibly diverse intentions and attitudes to the design of an architectural urban project, that will now be brought to the foreground. The three teams are asked to relate their VeMa-contribution to their work that is more connected to immediate reality and to make explicit the relevance of the idea of (ideal) city.

30 Kiev Patchworks

[...] Kyiv has flowed in and out of the European consciousness throughout its long and tumultuous history. Founded in the 5th century, it has served as capital of the first Slavic empire, cultural hub of Eastern Europe, forgotten village within a foreign empire, Soviet city and its current status as the capital of an independent Ukraine. During this time, the city has contracted and expanded repeatedly, as it was completely destroyed on several occasions. The last 60 years have greatly influenced the way the city looks today, accounting for over 50% of contemporary Kyiv. It was in these last few decades that the center received its wide boulevards and plazas in order to accommodate Soviet party parades, while huge residential complexes pushed the city limits well beyond and across the Dniepro River, massive industrial sites were carved in the city fabric and one of the world’s most famous metro lines was build in order to make this new giant organism functional. Bits and pieces of the old city, however, have remained trapped amidst the concrete slabs. […] Today, torn between history and destiny, communism and capitalism, East and West, rich and poor, village and metropolis, the city comprises all in a heterogenic mix, a patchwork of colors, textures and ideas. Finding its way through a process of trial and error, it builds and destroys almost randomly, constantly redefining its trajectory. […] The new developments are competing for space with the increasing sprawl of informal structures lining the streets and boulevards forming an almost continuous bazaar stretched for kilometers through the city. Contrasts of scale, shape and aspect occur with such frequency that they become the norm rather than the accident. The surprise is that nothing is surprising anymore in this rich collage.

28 New York Dérives

...The BC-NYC-studio investigates contemporary urban conditions as central point of attention. This book provides an overview of the research from Border Conditions studio 2007/2008 on New York City done by 21 students. The individual essays and projects position themselves within the general theoretical discourse on architecture. The Border Conditions program defines three fields of interest: architecture in border zones of conflict, marginal urban areas and avant-garde architectural experimentation. Within those three fields of the BC studio investigations, the specific research questions of the individual projects can be ordered into six categories: ‘Politics’, ‘Urban Phenomena’, ‘Social Practices’, ‘Public Realm’, ‘Public Object’ and ‘Individual’. ‘Politics’ addresses the changes that have occurred in NYC since 9/11 when especially the level of control has increased exponentially for the sake of security. This system of control influences both city and inhabitants. ‘Urban phenomena’ contains research about the changing composition of the city and its effects on cultural and spatial formations. ‘Social Practices’ discusses two complementing views on NYC: its people appropriating space with out-of-the-ordinary acts and uses and the everyday experience and perception. ‘Public Realm’ investigates different aspects of public space itself, such as structures within the city and their differentiation, the notion of mobility and borders within spaces themselves. The ‘Public Object’ deals with the sculpture in public space. And finally, ‘Individual’ is concerned with the notion of memory and the mental creation of space.

26 Istanbul Eclectics II

[...] Istanbul is the oldest continuously developing metropolis of the world. […] The modern metropolis rests on a thirty-meter thick layer of debris accumulated by the former stages of development and this history can be felt everywhere, mixed with recent constructions and fiercely appropriated for the current uses. Istanbul has a distinctive feeling of an oriental city mixed with ugliness and motion of a third-world settlement. This combination overwhelms in the first contact with a pulsating feeling of powerlessness and misplacement. The insight view though renders its inhabitants living their lives in a pleasurable and peaceful manner. […] The agglomeration as we know it today, spreads along the seacoast for tens of kilometers, covering 25 districts of the Istanbul Province. The real explosion of its development took place in the second part of the 20th century, when during 25 years between the population had tripled, leading to massive crisis in housing development. Nowadays more than a half of citizens live in these squatter communities. It is hard to define whether the city belongs to Europe or Asia, despite the fact that roughly 70% of Istanbulites live in the European section. Dispersed and internally divided agglomeration is bound with maritime traffic, which is still very dense. Istanbul stays fragmented also within its inland territory. Similarly to Rome, it covers seven hills, spreading out from a central ridge with swarming abundance of meandering streets, where the districts and neighborhoods are isolated within the undulating fabric of the city by abrupt breaks and steep slopes of terrain. Even great rulers of the past never attained control over their own capital, which defied the passage of time and still holds its internally independent and externally powerful position.

24 London Ad-Hoc-isms

This BC project investigated the center of London, which is a phenomenon whose ‘definition’ and boundarie(s) are by default ambiguous, vague and in need of explication. The continuous growth of the city as well as the fluctuating though high pressures of the real-estate market, have introduced a multivalent city and a multiplicity of spatial configurations within the city, bringing into question what the center is and further what it is in London. Whether London’s city center is still conceivable, real and concrete, or just conceptual; whether it is there but hides itself behind an appearance of homogeneous modernity or whether there are more than one competing to be the center. All these investigations are ineffective without the understanding of the city itself as the accumulated field of ad-hoc decisions and initiatives where this hypothetical center could exist. Mapping the city is an experiment in technique and experience, establishing rules, creating new possibilities and refining the glance. The metropolis is an indefinite constellation of the ephemeral and the enduring. […] The indefinite metropolis, the paper map on the floor, the remote idea of London contained in a few sketches in a book, in models, videos and initial mappings is suddenly transformed into noise, chaos, intoxicating odors and British accents. Finally the mysterious place becomes a walk-able realm, spaces to discover and analyze using information and techniques previously experimented with. Walking is the primary and basic way of discovering this ‘new’ place - walking without direction, without any other purpose than walking, measuring spaces, feeling and experiencing them. Step by step the city becomes more concrete and real, it starts acquiring characteristics and connotations of specificity or reinforces the generality of cliché. […]

22 Kaliningrad Palimpsests

[…] It is not so much the fog that suspends Königsberg these days but rather geopolitical constraints. After its capture by the Red Army on April 9th, 1945, and the subsequent Potsdam agreements, Russia was granted sovereignty over the territory renaming it ‘Kaliningrad’. Today, still officially part of Russian territory, it has become landlocked within an expanding European Union. Kaliningrad is effectively a Russian exclave situated 150 km away from that federation’s western border and wedged between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea. Kant’s ‘City of Enlightenment’ is all but forgotten in a territory that seems to have fallen into the blind spot of both Europe and Russia’s rear-view mirror. And now a city that is no longer Prussian, no longer German, and no longer Soviet, gets thrust into unfamiliar liberties, like it or not, within which it must find new bearings. Yet despite its recent marginalization in the Russo-European constellation (or maybe because of it), contemporary Kaliningrad reveals itself as a crucial nerve ending in a much broader geo-historical context. […] After spending some time in the city it seems that nothing can be taken at face value, as every urban fact becomes an indicator of multiple and contradicting trajectories. […] To begin to understand Kaliningrad, one must first embrace its complexities and ambiguities to the point where the bric-a-brac begins to emerge as a trait, nearly as a system of the city. Within the patchwork of urban spaces a zone of exchange opens where forms and symbols are continually reconfigured. It is as if the city itself has developed a strategy, a kind of immune system that absorbs the various intruders and facilitates the appearance of alternative narratives from seemingly dispersed events. If this is indeed a system, it is one that has no predetermined rules.

21 World Wide Airports

On Monday 20 November, the Podium for Architecture Haarlemmermeer opens the exhibition ‘World Wide Airports’. Ellen van der Wal, senior architect at Mecanoo, and Filip Geerts, assistant professor at TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture, will give the opening lecture at 17:00 at WTC Schiphol tower under F for the restaurant Ginger's. At 18.00, the exhibition will be officially opened in the traverse under the WTC building by Maurits Schaafsma, senior planner of Schiphol Real Estate. The exhibition consists of the worldly architecture of 12 international airports that are being portrayed in a perfect location: Schiphol. ‘World Wide Airports’ not only shows beautiful photographs of the architecture along with interesting facts, but also sketches of the first ideas of the architects and breathtaking aerial shots. The 12 airports in the exhibition are recent and future oriented. The central theme is ‘change is the only constant factor’. Among others, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, Beijing, Bangkok, and Osaka are shown. ‘World Wide Airports’ can be viewed from 20 November 2006 to 31 January 2007 at Schiphol in the traverse beneath the WTC, just in front of the entrance. Travelers and airport architecture are brought together in this constantly accessible public space.

20 Gibraltar/Ceuta Divide

Ceuta, a Spanish exclave on the Moroccan coast, and Gibraltar, a British Crown Colony on the edge of the Spanish mainland, face one another across the Strait of Gibraltar, forming a zone where the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean connect. […] Their turbulent history continues into the present, as the claim for both ‘overseas territories’, by Spain and Morocco, respectively, remains a key political issue. […] These similarities and differences find spatial expression in the different border zones that constitute their territories. From a historical perspective, the orientation of the Strait of Gibraltar has shifted profoundly from the East-West direction of the colonizing conquerors to be replaced with a South-North orientation. […] This shift in orientation also means that the character of the Gibraltar-Ceuta zone has changed: from an open gate that facilitated smooth passage to a closed gate that raises barriers rather than bridging gaps. […] The Gibraltar-Ceuta zone extends beyond its apparent, confined territory from Spain towards Morocco. The borders that mark the different entities within this territory seem straightforward, clear and hard-edged, but upon closer examination they turn out to be blurry, soft, differentiated and complex. These borders are unstable and shift constantly, the condition may change even between day and night. This poses an important challenge to the general idea of the border constituting a concrete and hard-edged dividing line. Proper insight into the border phenomenon, its complexities and multiplicities, can only be achieved by a concise investigation of the ‘daily realities’ that make up these borders. The Gibraltar-Ceuta divide is an extremely subtle, complex and spatially diversified phenomenon that completely lacks the clear-cut appearances the generalized, cliché border image promises.

19 Venice Atlas

[...] The Venice Atlas is an attempt to reconstruct some of the different maps that not only described but also gave form to Venice’s actual spatial condition. This condition is understood as a paradigmatic example of the diffused state of contemporary cities. […] Today, contemporary Venice appears to be simply a huge tourist machine, in which its history and density are treated as global entertainment and an antidote to the sprawling, sterile agglomerations of contemporary urban developments. In this context, Venice is far from an isolated example in finding itself becoming a victim of the ‘hyper-real’, as characterized by Umberto Eco. The city appears to be a simulacrum of its own self, destined to satisfy not only the curiosity of its visitors, but especially the onslaught of their most basic expectations: a romantic gondola tour, an original piece of hand-blown Murano glass, the perfect stage for a two-week, all-inclusive honeymoon package. Yet, while we observe that such examples of the hyper-real are erasing reality throughout the globe, Venice is unique in that it threatens to be obliterated by both the nature of contemporary tourism and the sheer volume of visitors, which at first sight seem to make any other activity in the city impossible. […] Considering the city and its lagoon as a unitary and polycentric urban space, we propose here the only approach we think is sustainable, resulting from the spatial relationship between the city and its territory. The city of Venice is the lagoon. […] The lagoon, in fact, has always had a double dimension: as an inhabited area and as a communication edge between the mainland and the sea.

16 Berlin Wall Zone

[…] In the spring of 2005, studio BC took the former Wall Zone in Berlin as its field of investigation. During the years when the wall was present and immediately after the Fall, the zone constituted a void connecting the periphery to the centre and back to the periphery with a north-south trajectory. Fifteen years on, many subsequent transformations have taken place in this zone. Starting with a group of 24 students, the initial task was seemingly simple: divide this line into 24 equal parts and define the precise borders within each portion of the wall zone. This defined strip in Berlin had gone through a well-considered strategy of urban development by the Berlin council. Acknowledging the temporality of its task, the city planners decided that future development of this strip should not be undertaken within the framework of a single generation. Consequently this meant that certain sectors related to the former wall zone would remain as a potential resource, able to accommodate unforeseen developments for future generations. For the research of studio BC, this strategy had a crucial impact as it offered the present condition in its full diversity. The former zone has become the simultaneous site of extensive urban development interlaced with pockets of seemingly open terrain. The research inevitably raised an array of issues, the most challenging being the treatment and value of historical contexts, the act of systematic urban exploration, the strategy of encountering a diversity of urban realms and the importance of mapping as an expressive translation of these realms. […] The elongated plot expresses in many ways its inherent ambiguities, revealing the intermittent layers of sediment between what at times seems to be the overwhelming mass of historic memory intertwined with the weightless banalities, or rather essential intimacies, of lived urban space.

14 Tallinn Edges

[…] Tallinn is a city in which many different layers of history seem to be glued on top of each other, so closely that one can almost touch medieval times, 1920s independence, Soviet features and market economy all at once. ‘Now’ and ‘Then’ are both there and in use. The city, being so fragmented and continuously undergoing change, called for an intuitive, site-specific reading of various scales, picking up details and comparing characteristics of contrasting urban phenomena. The Tallinn project began with an attempt to grasp the city by moving through it at different speeds: by car, on foot, stopping intuitively at fascinating spaces and objects, searching for identities that could be revealed by maps, photographs and writings. The maps offer a series of exposures to phenomena, events and situations encountered in Tallinn’s urban structure. Considering the huge impact of the ‘bulldozing’ forces of capitalist developments in Tallinn, it is noteworthy that these exposures were taken within a narrow time slot. They offer readings of a specific moment in time, identifying traces and starting points that might offer relevant material for future scenarios. […] Whereas the first reading of Tallinn was influenced by the multiple speeds with which the urban setting was investigated, ‘spatio-temporal’ edge conditions emerged from the reflections upon these first encounters. Thus temporality became both a method of observation and a notion with which to define the urban conditions of the city. An almost invisible system of spatio-temporal edges was revealed by means of maps, photographs and writings. Intuitively, the edges where different time periods, socio-political systems and spatial structures collided, had been identified, constituting the most challenging sites for research and intervention. Such edges were sometimes very sharp and narrow, with strong visual contrasts; sometimes they consisted of larger spaces of urban wasteland.

13 Marseille Edges

[…] I thought and still think that the phrase ‘border condition’ was exceptionally well chosen as the name of a current-issues studio for architecture students. ‘Condition’ comes from the Latin word conditio and can be defined as ‘a prerequisite’ or even ‘the inevitable’. […] Work based on the acceptance of the inevitable has yet to appear in educational institutions, let alone within the medium of architecture. Those who want plans do not understand what the inevitable is about. The border condition can only be experienced. The true border condition is dangerous: in it, one loses control, one gets carried away. The border condition undermines (the architecture) discipline and the (school) institution. […] It is impossible to simultaneously acknowledge and accept the inevitable on the one hand and resist it on the other. In the context of the school and within the medium of architecture, the borderline is seen by students as something other, as something that is alien to themselves, as something they are not a part of, as something, in fact, that does not circumscribe them (a boundary defines or determines what it circumscribes). […] Yet they do not see that the border is inescapable, that is to say, applicable to all, universal: common. Ultimately they will end up in art-related institutions and become the bureaucrats of the ‘border condition’… The centripetal forces of the school institution and the architecture medium have simultaneously negated and recuperated the centrifugal force of the ‘border condition’. The school institution and the architecture medium can do nothing else. Those who seek to delve into the ‘border condition’ will have to do so by themselves, without an organization, without an institution, without a concept – alone.

12 BC in 66EAST_Centre for Urban Culture

This exhibition will focus on projects and studies relating to the notion of the ‘border’. The growing need to enable different forms of collective identity within the urban environment is the main objective of this exhibition. The spatial conditions within border zones will be demonstrated through examples of international conflict situations and alternative urban practices. Urban borders are perceived as transition areas in which ethnic, economic, racial, nationalistic, and/or religious conflicts between social groups influence the development of a city. With examples from Belfast, Jerusalem, and Nicosia the (re-)claiming of territorial identity by these groups is placed within the context of generic urban developments under influence of processes of globalization. Furthermore, projects that deal with explicit marginal urban areas will expose alternative urban practices, giving new meaning to the use of the border as a means to demarcate space. These urban border areas, as they are part of specific urban programs (as in Rotterdam, Antwerp, Istanbul), show a remarkable tension between large-scale economic developments and marginal urban developments and events.

07 Istanbul Eclectics I

Istanbul is the oldest continuously developing metropolis of the world. It has been the capital of two successive empires throughout sixteen centuries, and only half a century ago has lost its dominant political position, albeit it still keeps the status of cultural and economic focal point of the Turkish state. The modern metropolis rests on a thirty-meter thick layer of debris accumulated by the former stages of development and this history can be felt everywhere, mixed with recent constructions and fiercely appropriated for the current uses. Istanbul has a distinctive feeling of an oriental city mixed with ugliness and motion of a third-world settlement. This combination overwhelms in the first contact with a pulsating feeling of powerlessness and misplacement. The insight view though renders its inhabitants living their lives in a pleasurable and peaceful manner. The city vibrates with numerous cafeterias and restaurants, overcrowded bazaars and lively streets. Shopping is exchanged for a hedonistic mix of chatter and tea-drinking, swimming pools are substituted with socially active hamams. The life and character of the city remains eminently different from any other we might recall. Istanbul is stretched over the Bosporus strait encompassing the natural harbor known as The Golden Horn. Primarily it was a peninsular settlement that controlled the navigation between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. From this propitious location it could also supervise the flow of trade between the continents, it is here that the city of Constantinople was founded in 330 AD. Since then until little more than a century ago it did not outgrew the original boundaries, instead, it first annexed the Golden Horn and then the Bosporus itself. The agglomeration as we know it today, spreads along the seacoast for tens of kilometers, covering 25 districts of the Istanbul Province. The real explosion of its development took place in the second part of the 20* century, when during 25 years between the population had tripled, leading to massive crisis in housing development. Nowadays more than a half of citizens live in these squatter communities. It is hard to define whether the city belongs to Europe or Asia, despite the fact that roughly 70% of Istanbulites live in the European section. Dispersed and internally divided agglomeration is bound with maritime traffic, which is still very dense. Istanbul stays fragmented also within its inland territory. Similarly to Rome, It covers seven hills, spreading out from a central ridge with swarming abundance of meandering streets, where the districts and neighborhoods are isolated within the undulating fabric of the city by abrupt breaks and steep slopes of terrain. Even great rulers of the past never attained control over their own capital, which defied the passage of time and still holds its internally independent and externally powerful position.

04 Nicosia Green Line

[…] In Nicosia (Cyprus), the division of the island has resulted in a border that is a direct representation of mentalities, and thus meaning, of the forced separation. The two border ‘systems’ reflect […] the specific take on the exact significance attributed to the border: while the Greeks are still in a conscious and deliberate state of denial regarding the division of the island, providing only for the minimalist and most temporary of structures to guard the border, the Turks have been making a physical statement about their intent to remain present on the island. The installment of a UN buffer zone between the two parties has created a very odd sequence of borders: the almost non-existent threshold from the Greek side, easily slipping into the UN Zone, which is strictly prohibited for any member of either side. This non-visible presence of the border is interrupted, and thus made visible, only at very strategic points in the city, where shabby army control points have been erected in the most improvised of ways. As the UN Zone has been in operation for more than 30 years, during which maintenance of the urban fabric has not been on the agenda, the result of this division is the emergence of a sort of ghost town, a collection of buildings and infrastructure slowly decaying and eroding, like a wonderful ode to the Zone of Stalker. On the Turkish side, the Turkish army has created a parallel zone that allows the military to traverse the border and impose complete control over it. The border has therefore shifted inward. The border is, in contrast to the Greek side, a hard divisional wall, creating cul-de-sacs in the city; streets simply end when ‘encountering’ the wall.

01 Belfast Peace Lines

[…] Belfast is not a divided city in the classical sense, a city divided in more or less two halves. Abstractly, it can be described as a city consisting of a central, neutral zone connecting the northern harbour, the commercial centre, with the university district in the south, surrounded by wards that are islands of religiously segregated neighbourhoods. The peace lines separating these wards are walls with various characteristics, both protecting directly and separating symbolically. These sixteen small-scale physical partition walls, however, never seclude: they are simply a line that keeps the two conflicting parties apart and can always be circumnavigated. In the entire religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics, space and image are closely connected: not only is the extent of each ward, in terms of urban planning, considered as a fait accompli, they are the scene of an extreme pictorial competition as well. On an urban planning level, the wards are considered so contested by both Republicans and Nationalists that any development within these neighbourhoods, despite contrasting demographics, needs to be solved within the ward itself. This has, in fact, caused the emergence of two cities. Moreover, the presence of images in the city forms a strange complementary presence in the wards. In the entire city, the texts, slogans, graffiti and murals […] are not simply superficial messages; they have a rather specific form and place within the urban environment. Their function is one of historical storytelling. This historio-graphic function is rather unique as it commemorates events that are deemed important as crucial events in time, in the struggle for freedom and self-determination.

Present Participants

FATMA ALIOSMAN CULHAOGLU is an architect and a PhD candidate at TU Delft. She received her MSc. Arch. degree (summa cum laude) from Politecnico di Milano and B. Arch. from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2006 and 2008, respectively. Between 2009-2015 she has practiced architecture in Italy (Studio Libeskind), Turkey (Tabanlioglu Architects) and Germany (Henn Architekten). Her research focuses on contemporary practices of social resistance and their spatial implications on urban (public) places. Her work investigates transgressive spatial practices and production triggered by anti-hegemonic acts of democratic dissensus. She observes, traces, visualises, writes and thus maps their spatial tactics and distinct modes of operation while simultaneously examining the potentiality of an alternative, more critical understanding of architecture.

ALPER SEMIH ALKAN studied architecture at METU in Ankara, where he also received his MArch degree in 2004 (magna cum laude, thesis award nomination). 2003-2007, he worked as a research and teaching assistant at METU, contributing to the master’s design studios, theory seminars and bachelor programme. As architect he worked with Exhibition Design Workshop, designed small musea, temporary and permanent exhibitions and small civic buildings. He conceives representation as the key mediator of architecture at different levels of both conceptual and practical production. It is at the centre of his body of research with a reconsideration of design-thinking to the modes of representation that translates the nature of design in different intelligible forms of communication. The transformation of the cognitive paths in architectural design thinking in the last decades is his main research course with a special focus on architectural drawing and design media. Since September 2007, he’s been a PhD researcher at TU Delft, joined the chair of Public Building in 2011 and teaches design and theory courses.

FILIPPO MARIA DORIA is an architect and PhD candidate. He studied architecture at the TU Delft (MSc. Arch.) and the Politecnico di Milano (BSc. Arch). His work has been recognised in international competitions such as 2009 Terraventure research completion (1st prize), 2012 Solar Decathlon (finalist), 2014 Netherlands Archiprix (1st prize), the Hunter Douglas Award (Nominated; ongoing selection) and 2015 Archiprix International (1 of 7 winners). In 2013 he founded ‘…’ (tre-punti) Architecture for architecture and urban studies. In 2014-2015, he worked with Import/Export Architecture in Antwerp, Belgium. He started his PhD research work at the TU Delft in 2015. His research focuses on the relation between blindness and architectural representation.

GIL DORON is a writer and an artist. He is the Founder member of Transgressive Architecture group. He holds PGC in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education in Architecture and he thought History & Theory of Architecture, and Design at Universities of Brighton, Greenwich, East London and at London Metropolitan University. His work on the issue of public space and “the urban void” was published widely in numerous magazines and academic publications. Transgressive Architecture works have gained exposure in the popular media as well as in professional magazines (see www.transgressivearchitecture.org). Doron curated exhibition at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, The Italian Culture Institute and 66EAST – Centre for Urban Culture, Amsterdam. Currently Doron is completing his PhD at TU Delft.

FILIP GEERTS graduated cum laude from the Delft University of Technology in 2001, with an airport as final thesis design. Since then, he has been associated with UFO-architecten, collaborating with S.U.Barbieri on various projects and competitions, including Wiener & Co., an apartment project in Amsterdam in co-operation with Giorgio Grassi. Previous practical architectural work includes internships at STUDIO, architecture and interior architecture, Amsterdam (September - December 2000) and Cunningham Architects in Dallas (TX), USA (1999). During his student-years he was one of the organisers of the manifestations Indesem1998 in Delft and EASA 20(00) in Antwerp/Rotterdam. He has been working at the faculty of Architecture (TU Delft) since January 2002, at first as a research fellow, later as assistant professor, teaching studio and seminars and he is intensely involved with the development and co-ordination of undergraduate and graduate programmes. He also taught at the Academie van Bouwkunst, Amsterdam. He initiated his Phd research ‘Architecture/Territory’ in 2003 under prof. S.Umberto Barbieri.

JOHN HANNA graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at Graz University of Technology in 2014, with Master's thesis on Urban Governance and Participation in Greater Cairo Region. During his study years, he volunteered and worked with housing and shelter organizations in Zambia, Egypt and Brazil. In the past few years, he worked closely with contemporary art institutions in Graz and in Cairo. Hanna has recently started his doctoral programme at the Chair History of Architecture and Urban Planning at Delft University of Technology, with a research project on the spatiality of urban conflicts, laying a focus on the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990).

KLASKE HAVIK is an architect and writer, employed as associate professor of Methods & Analysis at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment in Delft. Her research focuses on the experience, use and imagination of architecture and the city. In her dissertation Urban Literacy (2012), she proposed a literary approach to architecture and urbanism. She writes regularly for journals in the Netherlands and Nordic countries and is an editor of OASE, Journal for Architecture. With Tom Avermaete and Hans Teerds, she co-edited the anthology Architectural Positions: Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere (SUN, 2009). As practicing architect she was involved in the regeneration of the former ship wharf NDSM in Amsterdam into a cultural breeding place. Poems and stories of Klaske Havik appeared in a number of literary books and magazines such as Vanuit de Lucht (From the Sky) (2011) and DWB (2012).

DIEDERIK DE KONING graduated cum laude in architecture from Delft University of Technology, and also holds a master’s degree in Environmental and Infrastructure Planning from the University of Groningen. After having taught at The Berlage in Delft for three years, he now has a research and teaching position at the Institut für Architektur und Landschaft of TU Graz. Based in Graz, he is doing his PhD research on architecture in the countryside at the Borders&Territories group of the TU Delft. Recently, his independent architecture practice, led together with Laura van Santen, completed its first homestead in the east of the Netherlands.

RICK KROSENBRINK is a PhD researcher and served as an officer at the Dutch Airmobile Brigade, as a project engineer at the rank of Captain at the Army Engineer Centre of Expertise, and as a research assistant at the Safety Analysis Center of NATO Headquarters in Brussels. His research work is focused on Urban Security that explores the relationship between urban design and public security. The research work encompasses design, security and urban life. It focuses on open security measurements and mechanisms of inclusion such as local empowerment, community resilience and human security. The research aims to describe positive security initiatives counter to the more negative modern-day dynamics of securitization. Rick studied Military Engineering at the Netherlands Royal Military Academy, Civil Engineering at University of Twente, and Governance of Security at VU Amsterdam.

SANG LEE received his M. Arch. degree from the University of Pennsylvania and PhD in architecture from TU Delft. He is Assistant Professor of Architecture at TU Delft. Prior to his appointment at TU Delft, Sang was engaged in independent design practice in New York. From 2000 until 2003 he was Adjunct Lecturer of Architecture and the coordinator of the US-EU exchange program at the School of Design, the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught advanced research studios as well as core design studios. He also served as a visiting lecturer at the Bauhaus Summer Academy in Rome in 1999, 2000 and 2003, and as a guest critic at Columbia University, Pratt Institute, Temple University, UCLA and Sci-ARC. Sang has authored and won several grants from the European Commission, the US Department of Architecture, and the Netherlands Architecture Fund. Sang’s design and research interests emphasize the relationship between architecture, media and performing arts toward a means to assemble, reframe and project spatial and narrative qualities as an organization of experience. In 2007, he co-edited 'The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture'. In 2011, he edited 'Aesthetics of Sustainable Architecture'. Currently Sang is working on 'Architecture in the Age of Apparatus-Centric Culture', based on his doctoral thesis, and 'Meta-architecture: Semiospheres beyond Algorithm' with Liss C. Werner.

STEFANO MILANI, Architect. He graduated cum laude from the I.U.A.V. of Venice. From 2001 till 2005 he had worked as project architect at Nio Architecten in Rotterdam. Since 2004 onwards he has been partner at the architectural firm Ufo Architects. He has been also carrying out a research on architectural drawings at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology. Assuming drawings as the privileged field of architectural knowledge, the research attempts to enhance the role of architectural drawing within design research and theory. At the same faculty, he has also been teaching within the Territory in Transit Research Program. In 2006, he was invited to take part in the 10th Architecture Biennale of Venice. He recently curated the publication, Franco Purini, Drawing Architectures, 2008 and, with Filip Geerts, the Symposium Ideal/Real City.

GÖKÇE ÖNAL received her B.Arch from Istanbul Technical University, studied as an exchange student in Politecnico di Milano for an academic year and later completed her masters studies in Middle East Technical University, where she worked as a research assistant in between 2013-2016, contributing to the design-studio environment, workshops and exhibitions. Her masters research focuses on aerial vision and the framework by which it pertains to the discussions of the built environment, urban representation and the politics of image. Gökçe holds a number of awards in inter/national architectural and graphic design competitions, while her work has been exhibited in distinct channels including her collaboration with METU Fabric Form Group in 2012 Istanbul Design Biennale and 2013 Tokyo Design Week. Her PhD research explores the emergent city image and the set of visual codes intrinsic to the erratic dimension of urban form, where the fields of travel and representation interrelate by the notion of flux.

NASIM RAZAVIAN is a practicing architect who has received her Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from Tehran University of Art (best graduation project award and special talent award) and Master’s degree in architecture (honourable mention award) from Delft University of Technology. Her graduation project dealt with the notion of play in urban environment (exhibited at the Third Biennale of Public Space in Rome as best practices considering Urban Happiness). She has a number of awards, working experiences in different architectural firms (Tehran, Delft, and Rotterdam), and freelance architectural experiences. Nasim has a number of built projects and is currently working as a freelance architect on projects in Iran and the Netherlands. She is also working as a research assistant in Borders and Territories research group in TU Delft. She intends to start her PHD in Borders and Territories. Her research focuses on understanding of architectural construct through the notion of play.

MICHIEL RIEDIJK graduated from the Technical University in Delft in 1989. He started his own office with Juliette Bekkering. In 1992 he and Willem Jan Neutelings established Neutelings Riedijk Architects. After a monographic publication in El Croquis in 1999 they published their second monographic book ‘At Work’ in 2004, which was distributed in a special paperback version around the world in 2006. Projects like the city history Museum MAS in Antwerp, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum, the Shipping and Transport College in Rotterdam, the Walterboscomplex in Apeldoorn, the Minnaert Building in Utrecht and the Sphinxes in Huizen have been published in numerous architectural magazines around the world. Michiel Riedijk was guest professor in Aachen in 2002. He gave lectures and workshops at universities and museums worldwide among which Beijing, Moscow, Princeton, Los Angeles, Quito and Seattle. In September 2007 he accepted professorship at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology.

OSCAR ROMMENS graduated at the Hoger Architectuur Instituut Sint-Lucas Gent in 1994. After living in various metropoles (Barcelona, New York, Chicago, Rotterdam) he completed a postgraduate programme Urban Design (Archeworks, Chicago USA, ’95-’97) and worked at several architecture offices (Douglas Garofalo, USA / Kas Oosterhuis, NL / Dirk Coopman, Ghent). Currently he is a teacher in the research group ‘Border Conditions’ in the TU Delft and in the PHL Architecture Diepenbeek, MSc 3 program. In 1999 he founded Import Export Architecture (IEA) together with Joris van Reusel. IEA is a network office with its headquarter in Antwerp that operates from various urban biotopes and from the in-between situated public and private opportunities. IEA is not only active as the day-to-day architecture practice, but is also engaged in the development of theoretical concepts, models and prototypes and has participated in various selections for the creation or transformation of furniture, buildings, landscapes or areas.

NEGAR SANAAN BENSI graduated from Iran University of Science & Technology (IUST, Tehran), architecture department in 2006 with honorable mention. She received her master degree in Architecture from TU Delft in 2009 and received an honorable mention in National Archiprix 2011 in the Netherlands for her graduation project 'Space of the Voids, space of remembrance and forgetfulness, Havana'. During and after graduation she worked for several architecture firms in Tehran, Rotterdam and Antwerp, while contributing to design studios and workshops in Tehran Azad university and IUST, faculty of Architecture. She awarded the second price with her team for a national architecture competition 'Sustainable House' in 2005 and second prize for 'Project 1095- Pavilion Design, the Netherlands' in 2012. Since 2012, she has been a PhD researcher at TU Delft, department of architecture. Her research concerns a critical reading on the architecture of the 'bazaar', in regard to the understanding of complex spatial and territorial mechanisms within contemporary cities and their historical backgrounds. Currently she is teaching design and theory courses in the chair of public building.

MARC SCHOONDERBEEK is the coordinator of the research group BC&T and received his doctorate in architecture from TU Delft in 2015. His dissertation, 'Place-Time Discontinuities; Mapping in Architectural Discourse', presented a theory of mapping in architectural discourse by making explicit the relationship between spatial analysis and architectural design. Marc has practiced architecture in the Netherlands, Germany and Israel. In 1998, he and his partner Pnina Avidar founded '12PM-Architecture; Office for Architecture and Urbanism, Design and Research' in Amsterdam. He edited the journal Footprint, lectured at numerous architecture institutes, and contributed to architectural magazines. In 2004, he co-founded 66EAST Centre for Urban Culture in Amsterdam and published 'Houses in Transformation: Interventions in European Gentrification' (2008; with J.J. Berg, Tahl Kaminer, and J. Zonneveld); ‘Border Conditions’ (2010), the ‘Modi Operandi' series (initiated in 2013) and 'X Agendas for Architecture (2015, with Oscar Rommens and Loed Stolte).